Lucid

Is this what you're needing (I haven't tested it or anything - so your mileage may vary)? https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/microsoft-surface/2424/tip-be-prepared-to-recover-your-surface-pro-3-no-matter-what-happens As for the extra partitions... UEFI and/or drive encryption perhaps....?

I was kicking ideas around on any way to configure the initial start page of the Microsoft Edge browser within Windows 10 (Education) during OS deployment. Is this even possible? I know it's encrypted and such after the OS is laid down, but you'd think there's a way for us to brand/configure things during initial OS deployment (I'm trying to stay away from modifying the base OS .WIM file). I took a look at the Windows Imaging and Configuration Designer, and there's a setting under Policies for Edge that is "HomePageURL". Anyone have any idea what this thing does? In my tests I can get some of the other settings to appear (I can get my .PPKG provisioning file to create a user account), but this thing doesn't seem to do anything (nor can I configure "AllowPopups" to 1 and have that kick in properly). Am I missing something obvious here? Anyone having any luck manipulating Edge settings during OSD? Thanks ahead of time!

Where in your OS task sequence did you put the step to install your App, and the step to do the restart? Like SCCMentor mentioned, it needs to be far enough down in your task sequence that the full OS and the client have first been installed. And it'll need to reboot into the currently installed OS and not the boot image - because you're installing the App for the full OS, and not WinPE...

If you're still working on tackling this... How are you triggering things? If within the existing OS and not from within WinPE boot media, if you read that post you linked, did you try the original poster's method (second post from the bottom)? If that doesn't help, maybe shed a little more light as to what it is you're trying to accomplish...

Do you have the option to use a logon script and pin an item on a per-user basis? And does something like this work? Haven't tested it myself or anything... http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-add-the-pin-to-start-screen-menu-item-to-all-files-in-windows-8/

Folks might need a little more info to chime in with ideas... Are you wanting the Service Desk to be able to trigger an OS deployment to a fully functionl and/or non-working machine? And you say that there's not always someone there to PXE boot. Can you expand on that? If the machine won't boot, how would you image it? For techies in the field, what we do is have an HTA that's part of our boot image that allows them to authenticate and delete resource objects (if it's a member of certain collections). That allows them to trigger an OS deployment just as if it's a bare metal machine (either via PXE or a USB key)...

Have you looked at combining a script with Robocopy? http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc733145.aspx And if there's space, why not just copy the entire lump of data instead of just 3 years? Then, if the goal is to delete anything older than 3 years, after you confirm that you backed up everything successfully, have a script that trolls through the first dataspace and deletes the items older than 3 years. Are you wanting something more specific than that? In my opinion, it's going to depend on how much data you're talking about and weather it's a one-time thing, or a monthly process they want to trigger...

In case you're still looknig for feedback on this... When you say "CALL" do you mean "execute" or "install"? If so have you looked at the Run command? intReturn = objWshShell.Run (strPathToFile & "\MyExe.exe /quiet /norestart", 1, True) You can set it to wait until the process being executed is finished, and then just do several statements one after the other. Of course, you'll want to add code to check and see if it really did install. And there are all sort of other potential hiccups that can happen. But that's where I'd suggest starting...

Do you have a KMS server? http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/systemcenter/en-US/f30d0213-e65a-4b5e-9b7f-c78a9de1065b/how-to-activate-office-2010-through-sccm

What are the "other" machines? Are they all Surface Pros? Have you tried deleting the resource object from the SCCM database and letting the client rebuild it? Have you checked to make sure WMI is functioning properly on the machine having issues? Just a couple of random thoughts I figured I'd toss out there to see if they help...

Do any of the pinned items in the application and driver forum help? http://www.windows-noob.com/forums/index.php?/forum/57-deploy-software-applications-and-drivers/

Hmm are you sure those three clients had SCEP and not something else installed previously? You might try searching the registry for those other .MSI file names and see if that turns up something. And does the registry info in this post help (in the MSREMOVAL.TXT section)? http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/mse-protect_start/mse-client-update-failed-getting-error-message/3bfacf9a-eb78-4593-b6cb-1cec17f3fe0d Or maybe the registry keys mentioned in the threads here: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/mse-protect_start/mse-install-error-code-0x80070645/07b750da-341a-44b6-887f-39c9c11353ed

I haven't done much with testing for a laptop in a task sequence, so you'll want to test this, but one idea might be to change your chunk of code that says: ' Is this a Desktop or a Laptop If colBattery.Count = 1 Then ' Is a Laptop strSN = "LPT" & strSN Else ' Is a Desktop strSN = "DSK" & strSN End If With this chunk of code and see if it works as expected: strSN = "DSK" & strSN For Each objItem in colBattery strSN = "LPT" & strSN Next For what it's worth, I always use "Option Explicit" to make sure I declare all my variables in a script...

You may need to first search through the registry for other SCEP related keys and kill those as well. Maybe start by searching for "endpoint protection". And of course, back up the registry first - just in case...

If you've packaged the script into an .EXE, is there any particular reason why you are deploying it as a task sequence, and not just like any other regular application? Have you tried leaving the "Start in:" path blank? It should default to the root of your package...