Tim D'Annecy

#Azure #PowerShell #Windows

If you’ve added a new session host to an existing Azure Virtual Desktop host pool, you might get a Windows Activation error watermark notifying you that the Windows license wasn’t found:

Activate Windows. Go to Settings to activate Windows.

When I got the ticket from users complaining about the watermark, I started brainstorming. I thought I might be able to fix this issue several ways:

1. License users with Microsoft 365 E5.

2. Manually add an existing Windows license (only possible if you’re running a stock image of Windows, not the Azure-specific Windows Enterprise Multi-Session).

Since I don’t have those E5 licenses already and I’m running the multi-session OS, it would add cost to purchase and I would need to get approval.

Instead, I found that you can check the VM license by running this command in PowerShell (change the XXX values to match your Resource Group and VM name):

Import-Module AzCLI 
Connect-AzAccount
Get-AzVM -ResourceGroupName XXXresourcegroupXXX -Name XXXvirtualmachineXXX

After running that command, the string that you want to focus on is LicenseType. If it says Windows_Client, you are good to go and Azure will apply the license on the OS-level.

If it is null or displays as {}, that could be a cause for the Activation error. You can run this PowerShell command in the AzCLI (edit the XXX values to match your environment):

$rg = XXXresourcegroupXXX
$vm = XXXvirtualmachineXXX
$vm.LicenseType = ‘Windows_Client’

Get-AzVM -ResourceGroupName $rg -Name $vm | Update-AzVM 

I wish Azure had a built in Troubleshooting function or feature to “quick fix” this issue, but I couldn’t find one.

Putting this here for my notes when I have to fix this issue again.

Discuss...

#Intune #Windows

A company I'm working with requested an Intune deployment of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC to users on machines running Windows 10 or 11.

I wasn't able to find great documentation about how to deploy this using Intune, so I wanted to write all of this down. There are some guides going around about MSP transforms, but that's not necessary for a simple deployment.

1. First, download the Adobe Acrobat Pro single app package and select the 64 bit Windows installer:

1. Then, download the Microsoft Win32 Content Prep Tool.

2. Unzip all of the files to that they're in a format as follows:

   • C:\temp\Microsoft-Win32-Content-Prep-Tool-Master
   • C:\temp\Adobe Acrobat

3. Now that you have the prereqs, we need to build the .intunewin package for Intune. Open Command Prompt and cd into the C:\temp\Microsoft-Win32-Content-Prep-Tool-Master folder and run .\IntuneWinAppUtil.exe

4. Step through the prompts to build the package:

   • Please specify the source folder: C:\temp\Adobe Acrobat
   • Please specify the setup file: C:\temp\Adobe Acrobat\setup.exe
   • Please specify the output folder: C:\temp\Adobe Acrobat
   • Do you want to specify catalog folder (Y/N)? n

Now that the intunewin package is built, it's time to upload it on the Microsoft Endpoint and create an app package. You can close the Win32 Content Prep tool.

1. Log into the Intune/Endpoint dashboard and navigate to Apps > Windows > Add. Set the “App type” to Windows app (Win32):

1. On the “App information” tab, upload the file you created at C:\temp\Adobe Acrobat\setup.intunewin and fill out the required fields to continue:

1. On the “Program” tab, enter the following values:
   • Install command: setup.exe /sAll
   • Uninstall command: msiexec /x "{AC76BA86-1033-FFFF-7760-BC15014EA700}" /q
   • Install behavior: System
   • Device restart behavior: App install may force a device restart
   • Specify return codes to indicate post-installation behavior: Leave as default.

1. On the “Requirements” tab, enter the following values:
   • Operating system architecture: 64-bit
   • Minimum operating system: Windows 10 1607

1. On the “Detection rules” tab, set “Rules format” to Manually configure detection rules, then click the “+ Add” button. Change the “Rule type” to MSI and set the “MSI product code” field to {AC76BA86-1033-FFFF-7760-BC15014EA700}. Set the “MSI product version check” to No:

1. On the “Dependencies” and “Supersedence” tabs, just leave the defaults.

2. On the “Assignments” tab, target your deployment group or users for installation. You may want to hide the “End user notifications” so that it's completely silent, but this is optional:

After uploading the file, your application deployment will be complete:

Machines will begin to check in and pick up the app assignment. I find that installation can take up to 30 minutes, so be patient!

Discuss...

#Sharepoint #Windows

One of the companies that I'm working with wants to migrate all of their files on a local file share and move them into a Sharepoint site.

To do this, I ran the official Microsoft Sharepoint Migration Tool from the file server. I set my source as the shared folder containing 1.8 TB of files and the target destination as the Documents library in a newly created Sharepoint site.

After letting the tool run for a few hours, the migration tool completed and reported that it had successfully moved 209,726 files, but 500 were not moved because the scanner has issues with special characters:

They're an international organization and has French, Spanish, and Portuguese workers that connect into the shared drive. They're also using a mix of MacOS and Windows PCs, so the folders can get pretty cluttered with UTF and non-Windows character sets.

From the logs, the Sharepoint Migration Tool seems to only allow ANSI characters, probably for URLs and other internal compatibility. I needed to rename all of the non-migrated files from the accented characters into the ANSI equivalents and then run an incremental sync.

To fix the accent characters, I could go in manually an rename all of the files, but I needed an easier way to automate this.

Instead of figuring out the right regex command and running a rename command in Powershell, I decided to keep it simple and use the Bulk Rename Utility app that I've used for other projects, including the project I wrote about to redact Microsoft Word files quickly.

After downloading and installing the app on the file server, open it and target the share location on the local drive.

Inside the app, click on the option at Special > Character Translations.

I copied and pasted all of the accented characters and their ANSI equivalents into Excel and formatted it for Bulk Rename Utility to be able to use the list. Copy and paste this list into this Character Translation popup window:

Á=A
á=a
À=A
à=a
Â=A
â=a
Ã=A
ã=a
Ä=A
ä=a
Å=A
å=a
ç=c
Ç=C
É=E
é=e
È=E
è=e
Ê=E
ê=e
Ë=E
ë=e
Í=I
í=i
Ì=I
ì=i
Î=I
î=i
Ï=I
ï=i
Ó=O
ó=o
Ò=O
ò=o
Ô=O
ô=o
Ö=O
ö=o
Õ=O
õ=o
Ú=U
ú=u
Ù=U
ù=u
Û=U
û=u
Ü=U
ü=u

After pasting in the info, press OK and return to the main window:

Make sure that you have the following options checked:

✓ Files > Files

✓ Files > Folders

✓ Files > Subfolders

✓ Special > Character Translations

After checking those boxes, click into the file list at the top right of the window and press the Ctrl + A keys on the keyboard to select all items. This could take a few seconds, depending on the number of files that you have.

To verify, click the “Preview” button, then press “Rename” if the renaming task looks correct:

After renaming these files, I returned to the Sharepoint Migration Tool and started the Incremental sync. The sync completed successfully without any file scan issues or unrecognized characters.

Discuss...