Disable Auto Windows Updates

Disable Auto Windows Updates

Auto Windows updates are annoying especially when left untamed as it will automatically reboot the device be it a workstation or a server. I’ve written a script that can mass disable Windows updates across all devices even if they aren’t domain joined.

Technically you could go in and disabled the Windows Update service but that stops all Windows updates. I don’t think that’s a good idea.

Another way would be to bring up Group Policy Editor and go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Updates > Configure Automatic Updates and set that to be disabled.

However that option will work for domain joined devices but what about the non domain joined devices. It doesn’t make much sense to go to each device and manually edit the setting via the Local Group Policy Editor. To solve this issue I’ve written a script that could be ran across all devices including domain joined device and would leave other Windows updates settings in place.

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HP Audio Fix

HP Audio Fix

Recently I came across an issue were multiple HP systems that had a fresh install of Windows 10 Pro 1703 from a known working ISO and then upgraded to 1709. Once on 1709 the audio drivers wouldn’t work at all and if you tried to install the correct driver from HP it still wouldn’t fix it. Even manually specifying the correct driver wouldn’t fix it. It’s possible that this issue isn’t solely linked to HPs, however they are the only ones I’ve seen with this issue so far.

I’ve noticed this issue on the following HP systems:

  • HP EliteDesk 800 G1 SFF
  • HP ProDesk 400 G4 SFF
  • HP 280 G2 SFF

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Mass Edit ADSI Values

Mass Edit ADSI Values

I got tired of having to manually edit ADSI values for more then one user so I wrote a PowerShell script to automate the process. I even went to the extent to include a display of the values that were changed at the end. The main purpose of this script was to edit the msExchHideFromAddressLists value when the user is placed in a specific OU. I ended up deciding to make my script in a way so that I could just change 3 values and it will do all the work.

Here’s the script.

$value = "msExchHideFromAddressLists"
$ou = "OU=Disabled Users,OU=Contoso,DC=contoso,DC=local"
$yesno = $true

$search = Get-ADUser -filter * -searchbase $ou

Foreach ($U in $search) {
Set-ADUser $U -replace @{$value=$yesno}
}

Write-Output "Results"

Get-ADUser -filter {($value -eq $yesno)} -searchbase $ou -properties $value | Select-Object UserPrincipalName, $value
Code language: PowerShell (powershell)

Just alter $value, $ou, and $yesno to suit your needs and the script does the rest.

Swap Office 365 Licences

Swap Office 365 Licences

Update

The process detailed below has been deprecated by Microsoft. An updated version of this process is detailed in my post called Swap Microsoft 365 Licenses with Microsoft Graph.

I needed to remove some expired Office 365 licences that were expired to the point where I couldn’t do it via the admin interface so I wrote a PowerShell script to automate swapping the Office 365 licences.

You will want to run Get-MsolAccountSku this will list out the various SKUs your account has. something like this

tenant:VISIOCLIENT
tenant:PROJECTCLIENT
tenant:EXCHANGESTANDARD
tenant:O365_BUSINESS_PREMIUM
tenant:OFFICESUBSCRIPTION
tenant:PROJECTPROFESSIONAL

Just change the values in the script below to match what product you want to remove and replace it with and then run it.

$remove = "tenant:EXCHANGESTANDARD"
$add = "tenant:O365_BUSINESS_PREMIUM"

$swap = get-MSOLUser -All | where {$_.isLicensed -eq "TRUE" -and $_.Licenses.AccountSKUID -eq "$remove"}

Foreach ($User in $swap) {
Set-MsolUserLicense -UserPrincipalName $User.UserPrincipalName -RemoveLicenses "$remove" -AddLicenses $add
}
Code language: PowerShell (powershell)

That is basically it. It will just run and swap the licences.

Find files and folders

Find files and folders

Recently I needed to find all files and folders containing two spaces, normally I would use something like a file renamer but in this case for various reasons I just needed to generate a list. Eventually I ended up figuring out a PowerShell command to do it.

Here’s the code I used to do it

get-childitem -recurse | where-object {$_ -match '  '} | select-object FullName | export-csv -notypeinformation -delimiter '|' C:\file.csv
Code language: PowerShell (powershell)

The same code can be used to find anything. Just replace the two spaces with whatever you need to find.

copy files and create directories

copy files and create directories

I needed to come up with a solution to copy a directory/file to a specific location but I also needed to account for the fact that it might not be created so I needed it to also create the necessary folder structure and if the file existed I needed it to overwrite it.

This is the batch script I came up with

if not exist %appdata%\PROGRAM\settings mkdir %appdata%\PROGRAM\settings
copy "\\SERVER\SHARED\source" %appdata%\PROGRAM\settings /y
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Basically what the script is doing is checking C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\PROGRAM\settings to see if it exists if it doesn’t then it will create it. Next the script is copying the contents from the UNC path into the folder.

The way the script is currently written anything in the folder named source will get dumped into the settings folder in Roaming. If you need to copy just a specific file just add the specific file in the copy command and run it. For this solution I just set the script to be a Logon script via a GPO.