Todd's Blog

Updating Hardware Devices Running Lync Phone Edition

posted on April 16, 2014

I’ve had a Polycom CX600 sitting on my desk for a few months now. It’s been acting up in that it was unable to connect to the Lync server. I figured it needed an update but wasn’t sure how to update these devices.

Turns out there is a handy feature as part of Lync Server since 2010. Basically you download the updates, then run a powershell command.

Get-CsService -WebServer | ForEach-Object {Import-CsDeviceUpdate -Identity $_.Identity -FileName C:\updates\ucupdates.cab}

This will update all Lync servers running web services which in my case meant two standard edition servers. Which in turn will push the updates down to the devices. Pretty handy.

Pushing out the Windows 8.1 Update

posted on April 13, 2014

Windows 8.1 Update 1 came out last week. There is a way as a user you can fetch this, but if you are an admin you can push this out. Let me walk you through this. If you are running Windows 8.1 you will need to upgrade if you plan to continue receive security fixes.

Windows Update
If you are running Windows 8.1, you can use Windows update to install the upgrade from 8.1 to 8.1 U1.

If you are an admin, be aware of an issue with using SSL for WSUS and this new patch. http://blogs.technet.com/b/wsus/archive/2014/04/08/windows-8-1-update-prevents-interaction-with-wsus-3-2-over-ssl.aspx

As an admin, you simply approve the upgrade (and a patch required for the update to happen) and then your machines should start getting updates.

System Center Configuration Manager
If you are an administrator for your corporate network, you can use Software Update Services to deploy the upgrade (once its added back in to WSUS again for synching) or you add the whole Windows CD as an application to SCCM 2012 R2 or any version that support Windows 8.1 as a client. You will want to invoke setup with the setup with /auto:upgrade and make it available to users via the software center.

Happy installing.

Managing Drivers in Task Sequences with System Center Configuration Manager 2012

posted on February 19, 2014

When of the question I always get when deploying Windows whether it be Microsoft Deployment Toolkit or System Center Configuration Manager is how to I properly deploy drivers.

Now there is no right or wrong way, but I always steer people away from putting them in one big folder and letting the OS figure out which to use. Have you ever seen a Dell using an HP Driver? Been there so here is a flashback of a back post of how to manage drivers in MDT.

Let’s take a quick look at how to clean this up in System Center Configuration Manager. Basically add your drivers and put them into folders and then add them in as driver packages.

Then when setting up your task sequences, add a section where it evaluates the machine type and if it matches, apply the drivers.

Here is a screen shot of a task sequence in System Center Configuration Manager I did for a customer.

What happens here is as the task sequence continues along, it checks to see if the drivers need to be applied based on a WMI query. To get this information use WMIC to pull out the model information.

Further along we install applications that are drivers, but poor ones in that they need to be installed. Again we use a WMI query to only install the application if it matches the make and model of the device we specify.