When I started this blog in 2015, it was my hope to write regularly. I was also working mainly with Microsoft on-premises infrastructure at that time and up until 2019. Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans, so the stream of content never materialized, but I am not short on ideas. I’m…
Author: Marty
Cumulative Update Prerequisites Can Bite You
In my previous blog post, I wrote about adding cumulative updates to a Windows image. While doing so I smashed my head into a wall for a while figuring out that I was missing a servicing stack update. And if you don’t install that first, the cumulative update won’t actually install into the image. The…
Add Monthly Update to Your Windows Image with PowerShell
If you “burned” a Windows 10 or Server edition ISO onto a thumb drive (for example using Rufus or the Microsoft media creation tool), or if you just have an install.wim on a network share that you want to refresh with a monthly cumulative update, here’s a quick way to do it. The Steps! In…
SSL with WSUS: You still need Port 8530
I thought I’d share a nugget of information that proved helpful when troubleshooting WSUS Windows Update issues. And this also serves as a reminder that sometimes you have to go back and read the manual. I had a client machine that was configured properly to use my intranet WSUS server over SSL, and the WSUS…
A look at DISM image cleanup commands and consequences
For some time, I’ve followed a documented practice when managing my operating system images. That practice is to perform a cleanup before capturing the final WIM file. There are a few things you can do for the disk cleanup, but most commonly use of DISM /resetbase and /startcomponentcleanup yield considerable savings in the size of the…
Government regulations made my gas can unsafe
The situation I just got around to posting this now. Last year, I went out to get a new one gallon gas can to use with my new 2-cycle leaf blower. I was in for quite a surprise when I took it apart to screw the nozzle onto the container. What the heck was this…
Group Policy in Windows 10 1607
If you’re a sysadmin used to working with Group Policy, be aware of the following implementations of GPO in Windows 10. Changes per edition Home edition has no official GPO support and no local Group Policy editor console. Some enterprising blog and forum posters have purported ways to get around this, but I’m skeptical. My understanding…