Out of Office Hours

One of the features that we have in DeployR is the ability to create full stand-alone USB media.

I’ve been looking at a variety of solutions for installing apps on Windows as we work on expanding what DeployR can do.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time working with Copilot+ PCs (ignoring the Copilot PCs that came before them, with an over-hyped Copilot keyboard button), both the ARM64 flavors and the x64 equivalents that came later.

I think my “lab” (all the PCs on and around my desk) keeps getting more and more complicated, while at the same time enabling fun scenarios.

I’ve been doing a lot of scale testing of DeployR over the past couple of months (because building a fast and reliable content download process, especially under significant load, is hard work).

Out of curiosity, I measured the amount of network traffic generated by Windows Update during a bare metal installation of the OS when there are no updates to install: I was using the 25H2 July WIM file from Microsoft and updating it as part of the DeployR

These AI-inspired large Patch Tuesday updates are causing issues.

As I do a lot of bare metal deployments, I routinely download the latest Windows 11 ISO from https://my.visualstudio.com (subscription required, you can also get them from https://admin.microsoft.com with other subscriptions).

Microsoft confirmed it today: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/get-ready-for-windows-11-version-26h2/4529367 Windows 11 26H2, like Windows 25H2, will be an enablement package, so no full “OS swap” feature upgrade will be needed.

I’ve been using Entra Connect Sync, formerly AAD Connect, for a long time (going back to the days when ADFS was considered “the best way” — but it was also the most complex to implement and I had no real desire to do that).

Going way back into the time machine, there were third-party utilities like GhostWalker (remember Ghost?)

You’ve all probably seen a dialog like this when using a Windows Installer MSI to upgrade an existing product: OK, files are in use.

Microsoft announced late last year that the standalone version of Microsoft Connected Cache for Enterprise is now generally available (so no longer just in preview), with one new feature added: support for HTTPS content.

It started off as a simple exercise: I want to grab the latest Insider build containing the features likely to be included in Windows 11 26H2 later this year.

PowerShell ships with providers that expose things like file systems, the registry, certificates, environment variables, etc.

Since Microsoft unceremoniously announced the “immediate retirement” of the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (something that isn’t surprising since it really hasn’t been updated in any significant way since 2013 and leverages obsolete technologies such as VBS…

I mentioned in passing in a previous blog post that the “immediate retirement” of MDT was caused by Microsoft not wanting to fix a security vulnerability identified by security researchers in the MDT monitoring service.

Way back in 2008, I published a blog post (now captured by the Wayback Machine) that gave a concise history of BDD, now known as MDT.

Way back in December 2024, Microsoft released the ConfigMgr Tech Preview 2411 release.

We knew the day would come, and have talked about it for a while (see my previous post).

I upgraded my last Windows 10 virtual machine from Windows 10 22H2 to Windows 11 25H2.

In a session at the MMS Music City event today, it was mentioned that the monthly cumulative update for October for Windows 11 25H2 was nearly 4GB: The speculation was that this was because of AI, that the models needed were bloating the size.

Since Microsoft has posted some documentation that makes use of my UEFIv2 module, I figured I should fix the module so that it’s compatible with PowerShell 7.

It’s been a while since there was an actual release of the Autopilot Branding script, although there were a few “preview” releases as we worked out kinks in the processes.

The number didn’t manage to flip over to 5 million while I was still awake, but it had passed that threshold this morning: Yes, that’s the number of views from the https://oofhours.com site.

As Rudy Ooms discovered on the Microsoft 365 Message Center, bulletin MC1134168 announced a change coming with the September 2025 cumulative update: You’ll be able to install updates at the end of OOBE again, and you’ll get a new control that enables you…

For a long time, I’ve used three displays attached to my MacBook Pro (well, four counting the Mac’s display): One 32″ monitor in the center, flanked by two 27″ displays, one landscape (mostly for browsing) and one portrait (mostly for Teams/chatting).

If you’re going to be in Minneapolis next month for the EUC World Amplify event, being held from August 4-7 on the University of Minnesota campus, be sure to look me up — I’ll be there as an attendee (a refreshing change from events where I’m either speak…

In the “it’s about time” category, this one popped up on Bluesky today from Tero Alhonen: It’s time to start paying attention to the new Insider builds in the dev channel, since 25H2 isn’t far off.

The latest “what’s new” doc update for Intune includes this tidbit: So now you can restrict ARM64 apps appropriately.

Version 3.1.0 is now available with a variety of fixed based on customer feedback.

Autopilot v2, a.k.a.

In my previous post about pre-provisioning, I showed three apps (MDT, Office, and PowerToys) that I was installing as part of a task sequence.

Over a year ago when Autopilot v2 (a.k.a. device preparation) was announced, one of the missing features was pre-provisioning (formerly “white glove provisioning”).

When Microsoft announced Autopilot v2 (a.k.a.

2025-05-30: Added a section at the bottom based on social media chatter.

The title says it all — well, not quite because the full description is more involved and nuanced.

In preparation for an MMSMOA 2025 session where I am talking about the Autopilot Branding package (among other things), I figured it was a good time to look through the feedback, issues, and pull requests and create a new release.

I was working on some changes to the Autopilot Branding package and testing them out on Windows 11 24H2 and noticed a problem: One of the registry values I was trying to adjust, to hide the Widget button from the task bar, wasn’t working; it would get an…

When you initially sign into Windows, by default you’ll see the “pulsing color” screen as first-time “things” are done in the background: You can disable that “first sign-in animation” via GPO, MDM policy, or equivalent registry entry.

I’ve done a few troubleshooting blog posts over the years, and they are easily the most popular on my site.

I’ve seen a lot of blog posts about registering devices with Windows Autopilot, either at a command prompt in OOBE (Shift-F10, run PowerShell) or as part of some other automation.

Back when Autopilot v2 was announced, and carried over into the documentation, is a claim: [Windows Autopilot device preparation, a.k.a.

I have one big Hyper-V server, currenting running Windows Server 2022 Datacenter, that I use for lots of things (with 12 cores, 272GB RAM, 8TB of disk space).

TL;DR: SCCM maintenance tasks for WSUS no longer work if you are using WSUS with the Windows Internal Database (WID).

Microsoft enabled automatic updates for PowerShell with the release of PowerShell 7.2; that continues now with PowerShell 7.4.

I spent a lot of time in the weeds around Windows licensing, but I’d prefer to forget it all.

I have merged in changes from the community to create a new release on GitHub, which you can find here: https://github.com/mtniehaus/AutopilotBranding/releases/tag/2024-12-27 You can find the release notes on the release itself: Follow the links to the pu…

I could stop there, but I won’t.

After a long time working exclusively on Windows devices, I had switched to MacOS on a MacBook Pro a few years ago because that was the practical thing to do while working on cross-platform development based around open-source technologies.