Author: Kam Hussain

Windows Defender Browser Protection

Windows Defender Browser Protection

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Smart Screen features now available in Google Chrome with the release of Microsoft’s Windows Defender Browser Protection extension for Chrome. Most organisations utilise a mixed browser environment and as Chrome being one of the most popular browsers around, I always see it as a requirement from customers to have it installed on their end user devices.

Windows Defender Browser Protection provides users with an early warning when navigating to phishing or malicious websites, with real-time protection from Microsoft. Windows Defender Browser Protection will show a red warning screen letting you know that the web page you are about to visit is known to be harmful.

Also Don’t forget, this extensions works with Microsoft’s Edge Chromium browser. 🙂


https://browserprotection.microsoft.com/learn.html

Once installed you can test the extension using Microsoft’s ATP test ground:


https://demo.wd.microsoft.com/Page/UrlRep

Microsoft Edge Chromium

Microsoft Edge Chromium

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We all love Google’s Chrome browser and I must admit I use it all the time, I mean let’s address the elephant in the room. It eats RAM! But the speed and fluency of the Chrome browser I find it hands down better than Internet Explorer, Edge or Firefox. With a store full of extensions and customisation (Ad Block) it helps me navigate around the web without being bombarded with adverts.

With most organisations there is a need to stay Microsoft when deploying end user devices, this could be because you want more control on the browser, whilst Chrome in the early days didn’t do much to assist with granular control. It however does provide ADMX backed policies to control those minute settings to customise a browser for a organisations specific needs.

Internet Explorer is still around and well it won’t disappear anytime soon (I think!), we must move away from it one day. Organisations who deploy the latest Windows 10 OS to users tend to overlook Internet Explorer. Many legacy apps which are web based or interact with via the web utilise Internet Explorer in order to work not mentioning the 1800+ group policy settings you can enable…Yikes! The best recommendations on Internet Explorer is, if possible remove it!

Edge the new kid on the block was meant to be the successor of IE. It didnt go down to well when it failed to handle certain sites and would hand over back to IE. That’s 2 browsers users had to use!! More recently the Edge browser has stood up on it’s own but it is still clunky and slow in my opinion.

So where do we go now…?

Microsoft have revamped the Microsoft Edge browser to utilise Chromium. Yes that’s right! Microsoft are using Google’s Chromium power to bring a fast, fluent browsing experience to Windows 10 users. Using it over the past week has given a breath of fresh air to my Edge browser. I’m able to add all the extensions I used on chrome with the new Edge browser and it’s just as fast as Edge. This is defiantly a game changer with a whole new user experience. Admins no longer need to deploy Chrome to devices and users will still experience the same Edge UI but with lightening speed.

Go ahead download the new Edge browser (insider preview) and try it out for yourself.

How to DISM Language Packs into Windows 10 1809 1803 1709

How to DISM Language Packs into Windows 10 1809 1803 1709

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How to DISM Language Packs into Windows 10

In order to inject language packs into Windows 10, we first need to mount our Windows 10 ISO and then inject our .cab language pack file. The Language packs are available from Microsoft’s Volume licensing portal or alternatively you can download it using the following website, you must convert the language file from this website, all of which is stated step by step: https://www.itechtics.com/windows-10-version-1809.

Mount your Windows 10 Image

  • Create a WIM file directory
Md C:\wim
  • Copy your original WIM to c:\wim
  • Create a Mount directory
md C:\mount
  • Create a temp directory
md C:\temp
  •     Create a directory to temporary store your cab files
md C:\languages
  • Find what index the Windows 10 Enterprise SKU is within the WIM File:
Dism /Get-ImageInfo /imagefile:C:\wim\install.wim
  • Mount the WIM file using the required Index number, I am using Index 3 Windows 10 Enterprise:
Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:"C:\wim\install.wim" /Index:3 /MountDir:C:\mount

To find out what the current language is set to on your Windows 10 image type the following command:

Dism /image:C:\Mount /Get-Intl

Inject your Language Pack:

There are multiple language files for Windows so you may repeat this step for each language file.

dism /image:C:\Mount /add-package /packagepath:"C:\languages\YOUR LANGUAGE FILE.cab"

Now we need to set the language to en-GB as default. To do this we will run the below commands.

Dism /image:C:\Mount /Set-UILang:en-GB
Dism /image:C:\Mount /Set-SysLocale:en-GB
Dism /image:C:\Mount /Set-UserLocale:en-GB
Dism /image:C:\Mount /Set-InputLocale:en-GB
Dism /image:C:\Mount /Set-AllIntl:en-GB

And Finally I always like setting the time to your locale, mine is GMT Standard Time for the UK.

Dism /image:C:\Mount /Set-TimeZone:"GMT Standard Time"

Lastly we need to update the lang.ini file which tells Windows what languages are available when doing installations such as upgrades. Run the below command to generate a new lang.ini file.

Dism /image:c:\Mount /gen-langini /distribution:"Root Path of Source Media"

That’s all for now folks, let me know how you get on in the comments below.

Thanks
Kam

Windows 10 1809 In-Place Upgrade SCCM

Windows 10 1809 In-Place Upgrade SCCM

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Windows 10 1809 In-Place Upgrade using SCCM

I recently configured a Windows 10 1809 upgrade at a time when Microsoft had placed a block on the upgrade release due to driver issues among other issues. Whilst on my endeavour to get an upgrade working from 1803 to 1809 I came across issues which could possible save you time.

The upgrade process is fairly simple.

  1. Extract your Windows 10 ISO
  2. IMPORTANT, you must have at least the November 2018 CU for Windows 10 1809 KB4467708. Without this CU your in-place upgrade will fail. DISM the latest cumulative updates into the image, see my post on how to do this, click HERE.
  3. DISM any other settings you require such as language packs or removal of APPX packages. Note that if you already removed appx packages they will not re-install when you upgrade, however there are two new appx packages in 1809 that will install.
  4. Places the extracted files into a folder which SCCM can access.
  5. Add your 1809 OS to SCCM. Click Software Updates > Operating Systems > Operating System Upgrade Package
  6. Distribute the OS Upgrade package.
  7. Create a new Upgrade task sequence and keep the options as default.

 

Issues encountered

0x80004005 – this is an generic error code and does not tell us much. You have to check the following log files:

  1. SMSTS log file located in C:\Windows\CCM\Logs\SMSTS.log
  2. C:\$Windows.~BT\Sources\Panther\CompatData_…xml
  3. C:\$Windows.~BT\Sources\Panther\setupact.log

When investigating the log files I found the below error. It states that their is a mismatch in the language packs. In essence the Windows 10 ISO comes with English US language. However on my device I had only English UK. The device and OS media must match with the language. I therefore had to dism my language pack into the Windows 10 media. Ensure you generate a lang.ini file when you dism the language packs. I will write a post on how to correctly dism language packs.

<HardwareItem HardwareType=”Setup_MismatchedLanguage”><CompatibilityInfo BlockingType=”Hard”/><Action Name=”Setup_MismatchedLanguage” ResolveState=”Hard”/></HardwareItem>

That’s all for now folks. Let me know how you get on in the comments below.

Thanks
Kam

Microsoft AZ-100 Azure Infrastructure and Deployment Exam

Microsoft AZ-100 Azure Infrastructure and Deployment Exam

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Microsoft AZ-100 Azure Infrastructure and

Deployment Exam

Hi everyone, I’ve created a AZ-100 training course which is now available on Udemy. For a limited time only you can get 75% off the full course for only ÂŁ9.99 by using coupon/voucher code: KAMHUSSAIN

 

The course is available at: https://www.udemy.com/microsoft-az-100

Kam HussainFollow

Kam Hussain
TheKamHussainKam Hussain@TheKamHussain·
5 Jun

A great honour to have the imam of Masjid Al Aqsa, Jerusalem, Palestine to lead Eid prayer in Birmingham. He left half a million people in Jerusalem to be with us in the UK. A great shout out to @AVFCOfficial for hosting this event #EidMubarak #AlAqsa #AstonVilla

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