Free e-Books on several Microsoft products

Interested in a great variety of free Microsoft e-books?
You can find a list here: link

A list of the e-books:

• Microsoft System Center: Building a Virtualized Network Solution
• Introducing Windows Server 2012 R2
• Introducing Windows Azure for IT Professionals
• Rethinking Enterprise Storage: A Hybrid Cloud Model
• Introducing Windows 8.1 for IT Professionals
• Programming Windows Store Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, Second Edition (Second Preview)
• .NET Technology Guide for Business Applications
• Microsoft System Center: Building a Virtualized Network Solution
• Introducing Microsoft System Center 2012 R2
• Microsoft System Center: Designing Orchestrator Runbooks
• Microsoft System Center: Configuration Manager Field Experience
• Microsoft System Center: Cloud Management with App Controller
• Microsoft System Center: Troubleshooting Configuration Manager
• Microsoft System Center: Optimizing Service Manager

Good luck with reading :)

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

Howto: Deploy Wifi profiles with SCCM

In this post we are going to discuss the possibility of deploying Wifi profiles using SCCM. We are not going to cover the built-in possibility of the distribution of Wifi Profiles in SCCM 2012 R2, because this is limited. We will cover this in a future post.

To start, we have to download a little application called WirelessKeyView.
We will use this little tool to export and import the Wireless profile(s).

Once downloaded, run this tool on a reference machine. Open a command prompt, and key in: wirelesskeyview.exe /export C:\temp\wifi.txt

This will export the profiles to a text file in C:\Temp.

Now copy the text file and the files for WirelessKeyView to your SCCM server (preferrably to the location where the rest of your applications/packages reside).

Now create a batch file with the following commands:

 copy wifi.txt %ProgramData%

WirelessKeyView.exe /import "%ProgramData%\wifi_.txt"

exit /b 0

What this script will do is that it will copy the wifiprofile to your ProgramData directory. The second line will make sure the profile is imported.

Now you can create an application in SCCM which will deploy the above. You can point the detection method to the Programdata\wifi.txt file. Make sure you run the application in the 'user context'.

Howto: Upgrade SCCM 2012 RTM to R2 - Part 1

Howto: Upgrade SCCM 2012 RTM to R2 - Part 1

In this series of blogs I'll explain the steps that need to be taken to upgrade your SCCM 2012 environment successfully to the latest version - R2.
Take note that their will be a lot of screenshots and text, that is why it's split up in multiple parts. It's only possible to migrate from RTM to R2 by first upgrading to SP1. You cannot upgrade directly! So this blog is about upgrading to SP1.

First off, I recommend you to check this checklist for prerequisites prior to upgrading your SCCM 2012 environment:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj822981.aspx#BKMK_UpgradeSP1Checklist

Once you've checked this checklist, we can start.
In the example, we have a server which is running SCCM 2012 RTM, with MDT 2012 and SQL 2008 R2.

Step 1: Make sure there is a backup or snapshot of your server. If this is the case, you can continue.
Step 2: We start off with upgrading the SQL server by installing SP2. Start the setup.exe.

Step 3: Setup will check the system if it meets all the requirements.

Step 4: Once the check is complete, the screen should look like this:

Step 5: Click Next. In the following screen, set the checkbox for 'I accept the license terms' and click on next.

Step 6: Check 'MSSQLSERVER, and click Next

Step 7: Setup will check if there are any files in use:

Step 8: Once completed, click Next

Step 9: You will see a summary of the update. Click Update to start

Step 10: You can view the progress

Step 11: Once complete, Setup will notify you. Click Close.

Step 12: Next we will install Cumulative Update 8 (CU8 / KB2871401)





Step 13: Once the files are unzipped, click Ok

Step 14: Open the setup to start the installation of CU8

Step 15: Again here will be a rule check

Step 16: Accept the license agreement terms

Step 17: Select the instance you want to upgrade

Step 18: Wait for the files in use check to finish

Step 19: Ready to update, click on Update to start

Step 20: Monitor the progress of the update



 Step 21: Once finished, Setup will inform you. Click Close

Step 22: Next we will let Windows Update check if there are more updates that need to run.

Step 23: When done, restart the server.
Step 24: Next we remove the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK)

Step 25: Once removed, we can start the installation of Windows ADK

Step 26: Next we will install SP2 for WSUS 3.0 and the other hotfixes (KB2720211, KB2734608, KB2828185)

 Step 27: Now we will let the SCCM SP1 setup prerequisite check run (don't run setup but open it from the SMSSETUP\BIN\X64 folder

 Step 28: Once the prerequisites have passed, you can start setup by running splash.hta

Step 29: Use CMTrace to check if the upgrade has been successful.

Step 30: Install the KB2801987 update

Once done, the upgrade to SP1 has finished! The next blog we will talk about upgrading SP1 to R2.