Zero trust mentality: sounds kinda harsh, doesn’t it? Here at Specops it doesn’t mean we can’t trust our colleagues not to eat our yogurt out of the office fridge, but it does mean we lock our computers before leaving... Read More
Deployment
How to deploy a MSI package with Group Policy?
Group Policy Software Installation (GPSI) was once hailed as a great incentive for all organizations to upgrade their NT4 domains to Active Directory. It meant that there was no longer a need for those complex application deployment tools, it... Read More
Windows 10 As a Service Imaging (WaaS) with Specops Deploy
Windows 10 Operating Systems have changed and so have the strategic options available to deploy and maintain the operating system in the Enterprise. Imaging has traditionally been used to apply an operating system with a consistent look and feel.... Read More
The data present in the reparse buffer is invalid 0x80071128
A number of Specops Deploy App and Specops Inventory customers have recently reported the following error: Exception: System.IO.IOException The data present in the reparse point buffer is invalid. We believe this is a general Microsoft group policy related issue,... Read More
Are my computers patched against Meltdown and Spectre?
Following the discovery of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities, we have had a number of enquiries from customers about tools that can identify affected machines in their environment. Microsoft has prepared a PowerShell script that can run on individual... Read More
Removing DHCP options 66 and 67 for WDS PXE booting
When our Specops Deploy customers run into errors during PXE boot, the likely culprit is often DHCP scope options 66 and 67. Aside from Microsoft not supporting the use of the aforementioned options to redirect PXE clients, it can... Read More
3 reasons why a client is not PXE booting and how to fix it
In this blog post, we will go over a few scenarios where a client might not PXE boot as expected. If you’re not familiar with the PXE boot functionality used by Specops Deploy, you might want to start here.... Read More
Office 2016 Silent Install with Specops Deploy
In this blog post, I will walkthrough how you can silently install Microsoft Office 2016 on machines on your network using Specops Deploy / App. To get started, you will need to run the Office Customization Tool, and create... Read More
Reduce vulnerabilities to the WannaCry/WannCrypt Ransomware outbreak with Specops
The first line of defense in this scenario is to run the latest Operating system(s) fully patched. The exploit code used by WannaCrypt was designed to work only against unpatched Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 (or earlier OS) systems,... Read More
PXE boot, GUIDs, and MAC addresses in Specops Deploy and WDS
In this blog post, I will describe the core functionality in the PXE boot used by Specops Deploy. I will address prestaging, and how the MAC address, or UUID work when finding objects in AD. Pre-boot eXecution Environment (PXE)... Read More