ConfigMgr 2012 Notes

Eric Morrison has shared his notes as that he got from the System Center Universe 2012 - http://systemcenteruniverse.com/ live session and consolidated them down for this post. Hopefully this will be useful for anyone that’s starting to look at System Center 2012 Configuration Manager and how it’s changed from Configuration Manager 2007.

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/ericmorrison/archive/2012/01/26/configmgr-2012-notes.aspx

Shutdown Tool via SCCM (for Compliance)

The Shutdown utility has to be included with a company logo. To display the logo, create a jpg, png or bmp files in the same folder as the utility and name it shutdowntool.jpg/png/bmp.

The standard version 7.0 is here:
http://blog.coretech.dk/download/ShutdownTool-0.7.0.zip

You can download the latest version from Coretech blog.

If you do not force a computer restart you might face problems like:

• Non-compliant computers
• Computers being in reboot pending mode which might prevent them from installing new software and software updates

If you do force a restart you might face problems like:

• Very unhappy users
• Scenarios where you restart while the end-user is using the computer for a demo or presentation
• End-users calling Servicedesk and complaining about a virus that’s shutting down their computer
• Restarting computers that are already compliant

The tool takes a few command-lines where you can specify:

Usage: ShutdownTool [/t] [/d] [/m] [/e] [/r | /l] [/f] [/c]

No args	Display help, same as typing /?
/?	Display help.
/t:xx	Configures the countdown time to xx seconds (default 60).
/d:"xx"	Configures the description to xx.
/m:xx	/ Configures the maximum allowed minutes the end-user can postpone (default 10080).
/e:xx	Only run if last shutdown time was more than xx hours ago.
/r	Change action to Reboot instead of default Shutdown.
/l	Change action to Logoff instead of default Shutdown.
/f	Forces the chosen action.
/c	Disables the option to abort.

Example:

• ShutdownTool /d: "Your computer is non-compliant and a restart will be initiated!" /t:1440 /m:1440 /e:1440 /c /f
• The argument /e:1440 will prevent the program from running on computers that have restarted within the last 1440 hours.
• /m: is used to configure the number of minutes an end-user can postpone the action. This is done by selecting a value corresponding to the number of minutes/hours from the drop-down list. The list of values will change according to the number of minutes left to postpone.

How to configure the tool in Configuration Manager

In order to use the tool you need to follow these simple steps in Configuration Manager:

1. Copy the shutdowntool.exe to the local computer. You can do that using a script.
2. Create a Configuration Manager package without any source files.
3. Create one or more programs in the package to control the Shutdowntool. You MUST configure the program to allow End-User to interact. 
4. Create an advertisement with reoccurrence according to you needs. In my environment I have an advertisement running every Monday morning. 

That’s it, after a few days you will start seeing an increase in the number of Compliant computers in your environment.
Credit goes to Kent Agerlund and Claus Codam, who developed this project.

Ref: http://blog.coretech.dk/kea/updated-version-of-the-shutdown-utility
http://blog.coretech.dk/kea/coretech-shutdown-utility-0-81/
http://blog.coretech.dk/kea/coretech-shutdown-utility-0-9-is-ready-for-download/