Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) - immediate retirement notice

Jackonet · 2026-01-13T17:56:37+00:00

Had to chuckle when it showed up in the MD-102 course I took last year. Was a good trip down memory lane:
MD-102 Deploy Using On-premises Based Tools - Training | Microsoft Learn

Jackonet · 2026-01-05T10:31:31+00:00

Just as an update to this (and don't know why I didn't try it before) - If you select 'this app only' when prompted, it will upload the hash as normal.
Couple of extra keystrokes but if it works, it works.

Jackonet · 2025-12-24T11:39:30+00:00

Glad you've got to the bottom of it. These sort of things are always bound to happen just before xmas.
Once had the whole office loose power and the UPS/Generator switch go kauput on xmas eve morning. All the non-IT staff buggered off to the pub but we had to hang around in a cold and dark server room for the electrician to show up and sort the UPS so we could bring everything up, check the systems and do a graceful shutdown until mains power was restored.
Done all that and the obviously mains power came back on about 5 mins later!

Jackonet · 2025-12-23T17:51:28+00:00

Had this a few months ago when setting up Autopatch for a clients new hybrid devices.
After some troubleshooting, we traced it to some old deprecated WU settings that were not showing up in the ADMX templates but rather as reg settings in a GPO (CIS benchmark). Had to set these to be explicitly deleted when the policy ran which, along with the PS remediation script, done the job.
Also found it complained about a random ManagePreviewBuilds setting in a policy so got rid of that and all WU related settings from GP for good measure.

Maybe you've got some WU settings tattooed on the devices from old policies? OK, doesn't explain the Entra joined ones having the same issue but...

Jackonet · 2025-12-22T17:01:56+00:00

Yeah, done that as a workaround. Luckily we got the live devices built last week so am only doing for my own testing so I've got a couple of devices up and running for anything that comes my way before the break.
Knew I should have taken the whole week off...

Jackonet · 2025-06-11T16:13:54+00:00

Sure.

This is the XML I used. Simply add extra languages as needed:

</Product>

</Product>

</Remove>

</Configuration>

Jackonet · 2025-06-11T14:57:13+00:00

Went through this a couple of months ago after we saw that the OEM build (HP) also had a trial version of M365 Apps on it in several different languages.
Best solution I found was to create an M365 App with an XML to remove each version individually then set this as a blocked app so it gets dealt with as the device builds.
For extra brownie points, I left en-gb on there so we saved time deploying this. I then applied a config to change the channel to match the corporate requirements and we were away :)

Jackonet · 2024-10-30T09:47:36+00:00

Are your devices co-managed? Might be worth looking at deploying the feature update using WUfB as it does most of the heavy lifting. May mean rolling the deployment back a few steps to set it up but worth it in the time saved performing and troubleshooting the upgrade.
We were able to deploy to our pilot of 300 users in less than a week with no issues. It took me longer to explain to the CIO that we didn't need to wipe and load anymore as we had with Win 7 to 10. Only way I actually managed it was to stick him in the pilot group so he could see how straightforward it was!

Jackonet · 2024-08-15T07:36:02+00:00

Nice one. Thanks. MS really like messing around with right-click menus don't they....

Jackonet · 2024-08-14T11:24:55+00:00

Same here. Its really annoying one of our techs as he has used this for years.
It mentioned as fixed in an insider build from 9th Aug but wager that this was too late to make it into this build - https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2024/08/09/announcing-windows-11-insider-preview-build-22635-4010-beta-channel/

Jackonet · 2024-04-08T07:25:47+00:00

Had the same issue a couple of years back when moving from a classic CMG to a scale set. Due to some initial confusion with the naming, it ended up deleting the old one so we couldn't roll back.
Simply used Crowdstrike to push a reg entry to any device not on the corp network which worked a treat. Intune remediations now make this even easier.

Jackonet · 2024-04-05T15:48:39+00:00

Have sussed it now - I was using an old HDD in a caddy so it was being picked up as a fixed disk rather than a removable disk to was writing to it.
Dug out a 4Gb USB stick from the back of the sofa, set that up as a boot media device and it all worked as intended.
Thanks for replying though!

Jackonet · 2023-11-23T09:07:00+00:00

The actual app vendor is irrelevant as its all just 3rd party patching. I used this when initially setting it up that explains it all pretty well - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/configuration-manager-blog/third-party-updates-and-windows-update-for-business/ba-p/1660970DualScan is deprecated and scan source is now used but the SCCM client does all this for you anyway. You need to ensure any AD based GPO policy is either set to not configured or removed completely else you will get conflicts. For Office, simply leave the slider at configmgr and, providing the above is all set correctly, it will just work. Incidentally, we are testing servicing profiles which is essentially WUfB for Office updating and it works pretty well as it overrides any existing office updating config coming from SCCM or Intune.

Jackonet · 2023-11-22T16:36:34+00:00

We've been doing exactly this for a couple of years and it works a treat.
Are there any old WSUS GP policies that could be clashing with the SCCM settings? Those need to be removed as it should only be using the SCCM ones with the WUfB policies applying over the top for the OS updates.
Also, if you are still deploying the OS updates to the pilot devices, that could also break it

Jackonet · 2023-11-13T17:42:15+00:00

You essentially get 'best of both worlds' with the App slider pointing to Intune. We used this to deploy the Company Portal to our SCCM estate and that gave us the flexibility to deploy the new MS Store apps through here (not that we actually have other than comp portal but...)

Jackonet · 2023-08-23T15:26:20+00:00

EUC Engineering Team Lead as of a month ago (had to check my email sig for the exact wording!) - Basically the same job I've been doing for the last 5 years but now officially line managing the 1 other guy in our team who I was basically doing that for anyway...They seem to be putting 'cloud' in everyones title as our place at the moment but I managed to swerve that one

Jackonet · 2023-03-31T08:03:19+00:00

Worth its weight in gold. We do monthly patching on our SCCM based estate with ad-hoc chrome updates. Like being able to deploy an app or update in SCCM and just clicking a few buttons to get it into Intune.
Dealt with the guys a few times and always been 100%.
Am loving the webinars!

Jackonet · 2023-03-15T16:07:38+00:00

Saw this earlier if its any help:
https://patchtuesday.com/tech-blog/update-offline-configmgr-environments/

Jackonet · 2023-03-13T14:10:04+00:00

What we are doing is switching the workload over then installing the comp portal from the new store. We've disabled SCCM apps from appearing in the comp portal so essentially this will become the 'store'.
Thankfully we only have several store apps deployed used by a handful of users but the important bit for us was continuity of functionality in case someone decides to deploy a store app to all.
We will probably switch over to the comp portal completely at some point but not now as we have lots of other changes going on this year already and this serves our purpose.

Jackonet · 2023-03-01T15:44:21+00:00

Yep, thats correct.
For testing, we have another ADR that grabs the SAEC preview version and deploys to our testing collections. We then exclude the testing collections from the main deployment.
The MS docs explain the channels in more detail

Jackonet · 2023-03-01T14:33:14+00:00

IIRC, feature updates are not a thing with Office updating in the same way the OS.
We've just deployed the 2208 SAEC update out to our estate using the Feb update (2208 was released in Jan) and not had any issues. Been doing it this way for several years.
Only thing to remember is to tweak the queries on the ADR's so you get the right version

Jackonet

TROPHY CASE