Category Archives: Batch File

Open Local Computer Certificates MMC From Single Command

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A quick and simple post today.

Since Windows 8/Windows Server 2012 you can directly open the Local Computer Certificates MMC console by running the following command:

 certlm

This will launch “certlm.msc” showing the information that you want.

You can still open the default store using “certmgr.msc” as you could on previous versions of Windows.

/ JC

How To Deploy & Run PowerShell Scripts via ConfigMgr

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A customer recently had a requirement to deploy a PowerShell script to configure a setting for App-V 5.0.

Normally I’d do this with a Batch file called “Configure.cmd” containing the code displayed below. This works for the majority of tasks:

@echo off
PUSHD %~dp0

PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File ".\PowerShellScriptFileName.ps1"

POPD



As usual, I tested the deployment before adding into ConfigMgr by using psexec running under the System context (i.e. the same context that ConfigMgr deployments run under) with the command below. One the command prompt is open you can run the required installer as the System context:


psexec /s cmd.exe



This completed successfully and made the configurations that I’d wanted. Bosh. Bloody awesome I thought…


On this occasion however I needed to reconfigure a 32-bit application (App-V 5.0) on a 64-bit operating system (Windows 7 x64).


This doesn’t play well when deployed via ConfigMgr is seems and ends up running using the SysWOW64 redirection – the result in my case was that registry changes were made by the PowerShell cmdlet in the Wow6432Node area of the registry.


In order to get around this I discovered a new concept to me called “Sysnative” which is a virtual directory and special alias that can be used by applications/scripts to access the 64-bit “System32” folder – which is exactly what I wanted to happen in this instance for my script to produce the required result.


Therefore to use this you need to change the location that PowerShell is called from to %WinDir%\Sysnative (you can’t see it in Windows Explorer btw – but trust me, this little bugger does indeed exist):


@echo off
PUSHD %~dp0

%WinDir%\Sysnative\windowsPowershell\v1.0\Powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File ".\PowerShellScriptFileName.ps1"

POPD



Once changed to reference the correct PowerShell.exe my script punted out the desired results. Magic 🙂


/ JC

Creating Custom WinPE 3.1 Boot Image (For Deploying Windows XP from SCCM 2012 R2) Automated via Batch File

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Recently a customer wanted the ability to be able to rebuild Windows XP machines (!) via SCCM 2012 R2 by just adding machines into a rebuild collection.

This doesn’t work out of the box with the version of WinPE that ships with SCCM so to get it to work you need to create a custom Boot image based on WinPE 3.1, add it into ConfigMgr and associate it with the Windows XP Task Sequence – this allows WinPE to pre-stage onto the local disk and for the machine to successfully reboot into it.

The following code can be added into a Batch File and executed as an Administrator to automate the creation of the Boot Image and add the required components.

@echo off

echo:
echo # REMOVE DIRECTORY IF IT EXISTS
echo:

RD C:\TEMP\WinPE\LegacyWinPEx86 /S /Q

echo:
echo # CREATE X86 WINPE FOLDER STRUCTURE
echo:

CALL "C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\copype.cmd" x86 C:\TEMP\WinPE\LegacyWinPEx86

echo:
echo # COPY WIM FILE TO ISO\SOURCES DIRECTORY AND RENAME AS BOOT.WIM
echo:

COPY C:\TEMP\WinPE\LegacyWinPEx86\winpe.wim C:\TEMP\WinPE\LegacyWinPEx86\ISO\sources\boot.wim

echo:
echo # MOUNT THE BOOT.WIM FILE IN THE MOUNT DIRECTORY
echo:
Dism /Mount-Wim /WimFile:C:\TEMP\WinPE\LegacyWinPEx86\ISO\sources\boot.wim /index:1 /MountDir:C:\TEMP\WinPE\LegacyWinPEx86\mount

echo:
echo # ADD OPTIONAL COMPONENTS TO WINPE IMAGE
echo:

Dism /image:C:\TEMP\WinPE\LegacyWinPEx86\mount /Add-Package /PackagePath:"C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\WinPE_FPs\winpe-wmi.cab"
Dism /image:C:\TEMP\WinPE\LegacyWinPEx86\mount /Add-Package /PackagePath:"C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\WinPE_FPs\winpe-scripting.cab"
Dism /image:C:\TEMP\WinPE\LegacyWinPEx86\mount /Add-Package /PackagePath:"C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\WinPE_FPs\winpe-wds-tools.cab"
Dism /image:C:\TEMP\WinPE\LegacyWinPEx86\mount /Add-Package /PackagePath:"C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\WinPE_FPs\winpe-hta.cab"
Dism /image:C:\TEMP\WinPE\LegacyWinPEx86\mount /Add-Package /PackagePath:"C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\WinPE_FPs\winpe-mdac.cab"

echo:
echo # SET SCRATCH SPACE TO 128MB
echo:

Dism /Set-ScratchSpace:128 /Image:C:\TEMP\WinPE\LegacyWinPEx86\mount

echo:
echo # ADD ANY REQUIRED DRIVERS TO THE IMAGE
echo:

Dism /Image:C:\TEMP\WinPE\LegacyWinPEx86\mount /Add-Driver /Driver:C:\TEMP\WinPE\Drivers /Recurse

echo:
echo # UNMOUNT IMAGE AND COMMIT CHANGES
echo:

Dism /Unmount-Wim /MountDir:C:\TEMP\WinPE\LegacyWinPEx86\mount /Commit

/ JC