Dalle & DXter

New PowerGUI desktop background

By Fredrik Wall

The PowerGUI people have done a new Desktop Background.
So I switched right away.

Before:

 

After:

The new background is on the Winter
Olympic theme.

It can be found here.

 

I’m a pc geek with a iPhone

By Fredrik Wall

I did buy me an iPhone last week.
And now I have been using it a lot since I
got it.

Yes I’m a PC guy with a iPhone

The applications that I use most after the
the iPod application is Gowalla and Spotify.

My top 10 applications so far:

Gowalla
Spotify
iPod
Facebook
Res i STHLM
Mail
Twitterrific
Maps
Weather
Clock

 

Yesterday I made a Trip in Gowalla.
Stockholm Crazy Commuter Train –
Stockholm Märsta.

If you got Gowalla you can add me
if you like. http://gowalla.com/users/walle75

 

At work I just plug-in computer speakers into my
iPhone and use the Spotify application.

My favorite music at work to and with good
sound.

And I got my Twitter account in my iPhone too.

Is there a better Twitter client then the free version of Twitterrific?

Does anybody use a good messenger client in iPhone?

 

Function killNotes

By Fredrik Wall

This function will not kill notes it self.
It will kill the processes.

When working with notes many people
uses a file called killnotes.exe.

This file will help when Notes hangs and you
can’t start a new notes.

It will Stop notes started processes.

This function will do the same:

function killNotes {
    Stop-Process -name "nlnotes" -force
    Stop-Process -name "notes2" -force
    Stop-Process -name "nsd" -force
}

iPad for us geeks?

By Fredrik Wall

I’m on my way to be a iPhone owner.
But I don’t really knows if I like the iPad or not.

It’s to large to use on the bus and at home I need my
computer.

But It’s a cool geek toy anyway

http://www.apple.com/ipad/

 

PowerShell + Login Script

By Fredrik Wall

Working with a login script for my lab active directory.
100% PowerShell using .NET classes and WMI.

This is VBScript login scripts with HTA on steroids

 

 

The GUI part was done in 10-15 min with Primal Forms.

Why certutil makes difference between – and -

By Fredrik "DXter" Jonsson

Today I had to troubleshoot certutil. Not a big deal, it was about a removal of a certificate from a smartcard. Usually this takes about 5-15 seconds depending on the method you are using, but today when I helped my boss Mats with his smartcard, certutil didn’t work as expected, and I had to troubleshoot for several minutes.

 

The funny thing was that the command I have been using MANY times, didn’t work. The command to remove a certificate from a smartcard that is using the Base CSP is certutil -delkey -csp "Microsoft Base Smart Card Crypto Provider" "id" (replace “id” with your key container).

 

However, depending on if this command was copied from a chat/e-mail or not, the output of the command differed. Kind of funny actually.

 

certutil -delkey -csp "Microsoft Base Smart Card Crypto Provider" "id" working (but canceled by me).

 

 

certutil -delkey -csp "Microsoft Base Smart Card Crypto Provider" "id" not working (and says that it has too many arguments).

 

 

 

I copied both text strings to notepad and couldn’t see any difference.

 

My dear friend, the developer Mattias Åslund, mentioned to me later that Microsoft Word could do these things sometimes and do formatting changes that are “hidden” for the cmd console, so I decided to try to copy the text strings into Word.

 

Just as expected! Word revealed the hidden formatting of the lower line!

 

 

After a replacement of the – manually in the cmd console, everything worked fine and my boss could remove his certificate again.

 

Perhaps I should do like my dear friend Chrisse says and use certutil /delkey /csp "Microsoft Base Smart Card Crypto Provider" "id" instead, to be able to avoid these issues in the future?

 

// Fredrik “DXter” Jonsson

Deployment Share Sorter

By Fredrik Wall

When working with MDT folders you want to sort
the folders by name to make It look better.

This is not a task you do in the Workbench.

I found a great script for this by Michael Niehaus
at Microsoft. It can be found here.

It will sort every folder in the Deployment Share structure.

The script will sort the structure by making a _TEMP_
folder and move the folder there and then move them
back sorted one by one.

You can do this manually as well in the Workbench
but It’s a big job then.

In my folder structure the comments will be deleted
this way.

 

If I move (copy, paste, delete old folder) a folder
in the Workbench I will get the same result.

The property “Enable this folder” seems to work just fine
with moving folders.

Is this a known bug/feature?

I will write a script that fixes this for me later on next
week. Have to do another script first

 

Application folders in MDT 2010 + PowerShell

By Fredrik Wall

One nice thing with MDT 2010 is the possibility to
make folders in the Application folder.

I like a nice structure of things and with PowerShell
I can make my structure for MDT 2010 Applications,
Operating Systems and Drivers in no time.

cls
$MDTName = "MyMDT"
$MDTServer = "\\padc01"
$MDTApplications = "Antivirus", "Browser", "Office", "Twitter", "Security", "Server"
Add-PSSnapIn Microsoft.BDD.PSSnapIn
New-PSDrive -Name $MDTName -PSProvider MDTProvider -Root $MDTServer\DeploymentShare$
foreach ($MDTApp in $MDTApplications) {
    New-Item -path "$MDTName:\Applications" -enable "True" -Name "$MDTApp Applications"

 -Comments "$MDTApp Applications" -ItemType "folder" -Verbose -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
}

9 lines of code can make 50 folders in 50 sec

And you can make it in less lines!

 

Manage a remote MDT 2010 solution

By Fredrik Wall

This is a follow up on my last blog post about
using PowerShell from a Windows 7 machine
against a MDT 2010 solution (server).

It’s a how to use the Workbench on the
Windows 7 machine to manage a MDT 2010 solution
on a remote server.

First of all you need to go in to the Workbench
and the components section.

Then select Windows Automation Installation Kit x86 or x64
and download it by push the download button. It’s a large
file ~1 GB.

And when It is downloaded, select it again (it’s now under the downloaded section) and push the install button.

Now choose Open Deployment Share on the right side of the workbench.

The path should be like \\server\deploymentshare$

Now you got the same view on your Windows 7 machine
as on the MDT 2010 server.

I love this

But I don’t love the WAIK part, 1 GB of installation to be able to
do remote administration is not so good!

 

MDT 2010 + PowerShell from Windows 7

By Fredrik Wall

I like to do everything from my Windows 7 machine.
One administration point with all of my scripts.

So I wanted to access my MDT 2010 server thru PowerShell
from It too.

As default this will not go.
You need to Add-PSSnapIn

Add-PSSnapIn Microsoft.BDD.PSSnapIn

And you will not have that on your Windows 7 machine

out of the box. But It’s not that hard to fix.

Just install MDT 2010 on the Windows 7 machine as well.

This is a 10 MB installation file only

No problem!

And now we can access our MDT solution remote with

PowerShell.

This is a small test script

cls
Add-PSSnapIn Microsoft.BDD.PSSnapIn
New-PSDrive -Name MyMDT -PSProvider MDTProvider -Root \\padc01\DeploymentShare$
cd MyMDT:
dir

And the output will be something like

WARNING: column "CurrentLocation" does not fit into the display and was removed.

Name           Used (GB)     Free (GB) Provider      Root                          
—-           ———     ——— ——–      —-                          
MyMDT                                  MDTProvider   \\padc01\DeploymentShare$     

Name : Applications

Name : Operating Systems

Name : Out-of-Box Drivers

Name : Packages

Name : Task Sequences

Name : Selection Profiles

Name : Linked Deployment Shares

Name : Media