Laurie Rhodes' Info

As Orchestrator is guaranteed to grow in importance for most Microsoft based organisations, the need to query the Configuration Manager database becomes more important as well. 

Attempts to build Windows 8.1 Update 1 on a VMWare ESX host produces the error “Your PC ran into a problem that it couldn’t handle, and now it needs to restart.” HAL INITIALIZATION FAILED.

A common frustration with restricted staff members is the default behaviour of Internet Explorer to use Bing instead of Google. 

Google held over 88% of the search engine market share in January 2014 which is no doubt, a reason why Microsoft have traditionally make it difficult to change the IE default search provider from Bing.

On a recent project I worked within, Windows 8.1 workstations required the ability to install a freeware Store application although the network restrictions limited access to the internet.  

The importing of CAB files that were created by the Microsoft Security Compliance Manager as SCCM’s Desired Configuration Management Items can fail with the non-descript error “The cab file references missing content or contains a circular reference”.

A single SCCM 2012 R2 system may be segmented for use by different teams by creating security scopes.  This is extremely useful for delegating full rights to project and test teams without risking the deployment of development artefacts to production environments.

The Integration Pack for System Center 2012 Configuration Manager, distributed via Orchestrator, causes the loading of the SCCM admin console to crash on servers that have been distributed to.

Error specifics of the Admin Console crash are:

Windows Installer has been the default installation format on Windows machines for well over a decade now.  The technology was elegant and powerful but proved too complex for the subtle quirks to be fully understood by many people working with technology. 

Bootcamp Is the application provided by Apple to allow 64bit Windows to run on an Apple produced machine.   The application is provided in a zip format that calls an MSI with the current version being 5.1.5652, available from http://support.apple.com/downloads/#macoscomponents

With MDT 2012 and 2013 integrated with SCCM, default Client Replace Task Sequences can cause a situation where machines installed with the Task Sequences end up with Windows installed to D:\ not C:\.  This is primarily because, during the install process, the C:\ driver letter has already been assigned to the so the system drive takes the next available drive letter.