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Monthly Archives: May 2014

Time for Another Lunch and Learn!

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Lunch and Learns are kind of a tradition around here. A bunch of us get together, eat some good food, and learn something really cool!  I had three people email me yesterday asking for another lunch and learn. I guess I have to stop being so lazy and start organizing.

I need two things from you guys. First, I need a rough count on physical attendees so that I can pick a large (or small) enough place. If you are in the South Georgia (US) area and would like to come, leave a comment.  If you aren’t located in the area, don’t worry – you can still attend virtually!

Like last time, the topic is decided by popular vote. Do you have a topic that you would like to learn more about? Make a topic suggestion below.  Next week, I will organize the topics into a poll for us to vote on. I will start by suggesting three topics:

  • Using PowerShell with Active Directory
  • Why aren’t you using SCCM
  • Making Windows 8.1 Easy

I will have the date, time, and place next week. So who is ready for another lunch and learn?

A Custom Windows 8 Start Screen with Group Policy and MDT

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Windows 8 fixes every major desktop problem that you have. Seriously! Do you have laptops that occasionally won’t let a user login? People complain about how slow things load? Users need to access documents remotely? Your answer: Deploy Windows 8.

“But Joseph,” you say, “If Windows 8 is so great, why isn’t everyone using it. “My theory: that dang start screen. It is busy, tiles are flipping everywhere, and people start freaking out. You can fix that though. You can deploy a custom Windows 8 Start Screen with Group Policy and MDT!

Take a look at the screenshot below. This is the standard start screen that our teachers get. Any needed application is immediately available! They have a custom Web App for our attendance/gradebook software, access to their documents/network folder, etc.

Custom Windows 8 Start Screen with Group Policy and MDT

Our job is to make technology simple to use. Let’s look at the two ways that you can control the Windows 8 start screen. Our first stop is MDT.

 

Setting a Custom Windows 8 Start Screen with MDT

This is my preferred method of editing the Windows 8 start screen. First, it works on Windows 8 Pro or Enterprise. Second, it can be considered a preference. Once the initial layout is set, users are free to change it. To get started, set up a Windows 8 machine and configure the Start Screen to your liking. Group, rename, pin apps, etc.  You can pin folder/drives by right clicking on them in Windows Explorer.

Custom Windows 8 Start Screen with Group Policy and MDT

If you want to create an IE web app, visit the website – create a gear icon – and select Add Site to Apps. Do you have certain apps that apply to specific users? Go ahead and pin them now. The Start Screen shortcut won’t appear unless the applications’ shortcut is in the Start Menu directory. This allows you to create a meshed together start screen without user’s having unnecessary applications.

Once everything is configured, launch PowerShell ISE and export your Start Screen layout like this:

Export-StartLayout -LiteralPath .\StartScreenLayout.bin -As BIN

Launch Explorer and browse to your DeploymentShare. Create a new folder within the Applications sub-folder. Name it StartScreenLayout and copy your StartScreenLayout.bin file into it. Create a batch file that contains the following:

POWERSHELL.exe -NonInteractive -Command Import-StartLayout -LayoutPath \\wds\deploymentshare$\Applications\StartScreenLayout\StartScreenLayout.bin -MountPath %SystemDrive%\

Edit your Windows 8 task sequence and create a new Run Command Line task in the State Restore phase. Your command will be the full path to the batch file that you created above.

Custom Windows 8 Start Screen with Group Policy and MDT

Your local administrator account will still have the default start screen but all new accounts will have your custom layout. If you have already deployed Windows 8 and can’t re-image the machines, you have two options.

 

Using Group Policy to Set the Windows 8 Start Screen

Before we jump too far down this rabbit hole, let’s mention two conditions. First, this only works on 8.1 Enterprise, 8.1 RT with Sideloading, and 2012 R2. Windows 8.1 Pro is not supported. The second condition is that this is a policy. Your users will not be able to edit the Start Screen with this setting enabled. They won’t even be able to right click on any tile. For those who crave this absolute control and power, I know a good therapist.

Let’s start the same way. Fire up a Windows 8 machine and configure the Start Screen to a default layout. Launch PowerShell ISE and use the Export-StartLayout cmdlet (as we did above). You will need to save your file with an .XML extension and change the -AS parameter to XML. Save the exported layout to a network share that is accessible by your users.

Launch the GPMC and navigate to either Computer or User Configuration. Select Start Menu and Taskbar and enable Start Screen Layout.

Custom Windows 8 Start Screen with Group Policy and MDT

This setting is only active when the start screen layout is assessable. If you have laptops, you will probably want to use Group Policy Files to copy the layout to a local folder. This will ensure a consistent Start Screen wherever the user goes. There is no escaping your power.

Have you started deploying Windows 8 yet? What other issues have you run into?

 

Cleaning and Deleting Old Files with PowerShell

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Summer time approaches and the days seem to get just a bit easier! People are starting to catch up on things, delete old emails, and clean out old files. What? Your people don’t automatically delete files that aren’t needed anymore? You are telling me that they expect you to keep and backup everything that they have ever created! It is time to clean out the trash and free up some space. Lucky for us, this whole process becomes super easy when we start deleting old files with PowerShell!

Before we jump to the script, you will need to decide on two things. First, what is the oldest file that you want? We will measure this by the date accessed attribute.  For our environment, we delete any file that hasn’t been used for three years. If today is June 1st, we only want files newer than 06/01/2011.

Second, you will need to think about any files to exclude. For example, you might have log files, videos, or records that should never be deleted. If you have files like this, you will need to create a CSV to exclude them.

Cleaning and Deleting Old Files with PowerShell

At the top of your CSV, enter Name. In the lines below, you can either specify folder names, file names, or a mixture. The screenshot above shows a few different examples including some with wildcards. Got your maximum age in mind and your exclusion CSV create? Great – let’s create our PowerShell cleanup script.

 

Our Deleting Old Files with PowerShell Script

Launch PowerShell ISE and paste the script below. On the second $exclusions line, change the import-csv command so that it points to your new CSV. In the $Directory line, replace \\SERVER\SHARE and specify the share that you want to clean up. In that same line, change the Last Access Time date to match your maximum file age.

# The line below is the path to the exceptions file - one entry per line
$exclusions = @()
$exclusions = import-csv .\exclusions.csv

#The line below deletes everything EXCEPT what is in the exclusion file.
Clear-Variable Directory -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
$Directory = Get-ChildItem \\SERVER\SHARE -Recurse | where-object { $_.LastAccessTime -lt "06/01/2011" } | sort Name |select name,fullname,lastaccesstime


foreach ($exclusion in $exclusions){
$Exclusion = $exclusion.name
$Directory = $Directory | Where-Object {$_.FullName -notlike "*$exclusion*"}

}

$Directory | export-csv .\Deleted.csv -NoTypeInformation -Append
$Directory.fullname | remove-item -Recurse -whatif -Verbose

You can now run this script to test your results. Any file that will be deleted will be recorded in a Deleted.CSV file. This file is created in the current run path of your PowerShell console. When you get ready to run this script in live action mode, remove the -whatif parameter in the very last line. If you have multiple shares to clean up, you can create a new variable name $Shares and have the script walk through each item.

This is how we keep our file hoarders at bay! If you have any suggestions to improve this script, leave a comment below. If you use another method, I would love to hear about it!

User Profile Cleanup with Group Policy

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Old user profiles are making life difficult for you. They eat up space, slow down troubleshooting times, and can re-introduce forgotten problems.  There are a few ways to handle old profiles. Some will use simply delete them (bad mistake). Others will manually run the tool DelProf. But you, wise reader, prefer the automatic way. That is why you perform user profile cleanup with Group Policy!

How to Delete Old Profiles with Group Policy

Create a new GPO named User Profile Cleanup and edit it. Browse to Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\System\User Profiles. Enable Delete User Profiles Older than a Specified Number of Days on System Restart.

The default deletion age for a profile starts at 30 days. You will need to think about your environment and how your computers are used. Do you stored all critical information and documents outside of the user profile (ex: by using folder redirection)? Then you can probably set the deletion value to a lower number such as 14 days.

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If you do keep important information in your local profiles, consider how old a profile needs to be before it should be considered obsolete. 90 days might be a more appropriate number for you. If your organization has down time, keep that in mind (ex: School Systems that are off in the Summer).

With your setting enabled, link your GPO. Remote into a few machines and take a snapshot of the Users folder. Check back after the user profile service runs. You should be pleasantly surprised by how clean everything is!

Remember that the user profile service will only clean profiles on a reboot. If your machines never restart, this setting won’t help you. Our next post will cover automatic restarts and why you need them. If you have any questions about this Group Policy setting or on cleaning up machines, leave a comment below.

Exploring WMI and Testing Group Policy WMI Filters

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Welcome to the final post in our Wonderful World of WMI series! So far, you have learned how WMI is organized, how to query it, and how it works with Group Policy. Now, let’s use two great tools to make WMI a bit more user friendly and learn potential pitfalls with WMI.

 

How to Use the WMI Code Creator

Our first tool makes exploring WMI easier and can even help you write your queries! To start, download the Microsoft Code Creator. Extract the files to an IT share and launch WMICodeCreator.exe. After it loads the WMI classes, select the second drop down menu and start exploring!

Capture

 

Remember our laptop WMI query from the last post? The WMI Code Creator can let you see the query in a GUI format. Select the Win32_Battery class and then choose BatteryStatus as your properties. To see results, press the Search for Property Values button. You should now see your computer’s batterystatus!

On the right hand side, you can see what your WMI query would look like in VB Script. The syntax in the script (Select * From….) shows you how to organize your query. A very similar tool for PowerShell can be downloaded here.

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