When you deploy Windows 8.1 in your environnement, you may define a strategy to force all users to have the same Start Menu Layout. This layout was defined by IT Team and will be provide to all computers.
For example, I set a custom layout: I added some tools and application groups:
Windows 8.1 Custom Start Menu
If you want to deploy this Start Menu Layout, you can do it with:
If you are testing Windows Server Technical Preview 2, you probably noticed that the Graphical interface is no more enabled by default.
In fact, in Windows Server Technical Preview, you have two choices at the installation: Core and Core With Local Admin Tools. The second choice, Local Admin Tools lets you configure your server with Server Manager.
Technical Preview Installation
Server Technical Preview no GUI
Like Windows Server 2012, GUI will be enabled by using Server Manager.
Server Preview Enable GUI
Technical Preview GUI
You can download Windows Server Technical Preview 2 here.
Since Windows Server 2012, Server Manager is displayed when you log in. This can be annoying to close it each time. Hopefully, you can disable this behavior using two solutions:
If you want to prevent Server Manager to start automatically:
Server Manager Properties
Server Manager not start automatically
You can also set this option by GPO:
GPO Server Manager Disabled
You could get more information about Server Manager here.
To continue in Powershell posts, we will see how to change the local description of the server. Not in Active Directory attribute but on the computer itself.
The local description is set is the WMI of the server. In the class Win32_OperatingSystem. To change it, we need to get the objects, set the new content and save the modification.
$OSWMI=Get-WmiObject -class Win32_OperatingSystem $OSWMI.Description="My Server" $OSWMI.put() |
It is possible to modify the description on a remote computer, however, we need to adapt the script if the string is store in a variable.
With the Invoke-Command we add the parameter –ArgumentList, so that our variable content will be available on the execution on the remote host.
$myDescription="My Server" Invoke-Command -ComputerName $lServerName -ScriptBlock {$OSWMI=Get-WmiObject -class Win32_OperatingSystem;$OSWMI.Description=$args[0];$OSWMI.put() } -ArgumentList($myDescription) |
You can get more information about Win32_OperatingSystem class here
Did you know that you can manage disks, partitions and volumes using Powershell? Microsoft released a lot of cmdlet in order to facilitate handling of disks.
With virtualization, you can easily add disk to your server, but you have to create the volume yourself. I wrote a script that you can integrate in your process, runbooks or others.
First thing to do, is to prepare disks to host volume. We need to set disks online and to disable Read only.
try { #Set all disks, except the first disk, to online and writable Get-Disk | ?{$_.number -ne 0}| Set-Disk -IsOffline $False Get-Disk | ?{$_.number -ne 0}| Set-Disk -isReadOnly $False #Initialize all disks Get-Disk | ?{$_.number -ne 0}| Initialize-Disk -PartitionStyle GPT }catch{ Write-Host $_.Exception.Message } |
Once disks are ready, we need to create, and format volume.
try { #Create Partition on all disk, auto assign letter and use maximum size Get-Disk | ?{$_.number -ne 0}| New-Partition -AssignDriveLetter -UseMaximumSize #Get all partitions and format them Get-Disk | ?{$_.number -ne 0}| Get-Partition |?{$_.type -like "Basic"}| Format-Volume -Confirm:$false }catch{ Write-Host $_.Exception.Message } |
If you want to execute these command on a remote host, it is possible. We will use the cmdlet Invoke-Command
try { #Set all disks, except the first disk, to online and writable Invoke-Command -ComputerName $lServerName -ScriptBlock {Get-Disk | ?{$_.number -ne 0}| Set-Disk -IsOffline $False} Invoke-Command -ComputerName $lServerName -ScriptBlock {Get-Disk | ?{$_.number -ne 0}| Set-Disk -isReadOnly $False} #Initialize all disks Invoke-Command -ComputerName $lServerName -ScriptBlock {Get-Disk | ?{$_.number -ne 0}| Initialize-Disk -PartitionStyle GPT} #Create Partition on all disk, auto assign letter and use maximum size Invoke-Command -ComputerName $lServerName -ScriptBlock {Get-Disk | ?{$_.number -ne 0}| New-Partition -AssignDriveLetter -UseMaximumSize} #Get all partitions and format them Invoke-Command -ComputerName $lServerName -ScriptBlock {Get-Disk | ?{$_.number -ne 0}| Get-Partition |?{$_.type -like "Basic"}| Format-Volume -Confirm:$false } }catch{ Write-Host $_.Exception.Message } |
You can get more information about Disk Management cmdlet here.
When you deploy Windows 8.1 on computers which have a Wifi adapter, there is a step in the Setup Wizard to choose the Wifi network, even if ethernet card is active.
Wireless Setup
This step can block a SCCM task sequence or a MDT deployment because the Wizard asks for an action.
Fortunately, this step can be bypass/disabled by using an unattend.xml file.
When you deploy a new Windows 8/ 8.1 operating system, you have a lot of Modern UI Application in your profile. But, for an enterprise, these Apps can be annoying: almost all of them are for personnal use.
By example, we can find:
Hopefully, you can remove / uninstall modern ui Apps by using a Powershell command line.
Microsoft provides two type of Powershell Cmdlet, depend of if you want to remove Apps on a User Profile, or on a System:
