If you’ve been keeping up with my blog posts, you’ll know that HP natively provides a few WMI classes and methods to the WIndows OS. These WMI classes work great for managing BIOS settings, but what if I want to manage Firmware updates or work with HP Softpaqs? One answer is to use the HP Client Management Script Library. The HP CMSL is a bundle of PowerShell modules created by HP for the purpose of managing HP firmware and drivers from the command line. ...

UPDATE September 16th, 2020 - The scripts included in these downloads are currently outdated. I plan to update this post soon with the latest script versions. Now that I have working BIOS management scripts for Dell, HP, and Lenovo, I figured I would put them all together in a few example task sequences. This post will also act as a hub for my BIOS management posts. Current BIOS Management Posts Dell BIOS Password Management Dell BIOS Settings Management HP BIOS Password Management HP BIOS Settings Management Lenovo BIOS Password Management Lenovo BIOS Settings Management ...

This post was updated on September 11th, 2020. Update: Dell does now provide native WMI classes to manage BIOS settings on newer models. For more information, see this post: Dell BIOS Settings Management - WMI. For information on using the Dell PowerShell module to configure settings on older models, continue reading this post. This post is one of 3 posts in my series on managing BIOS settings using PowerShell. I’ve also written about HP and Lenovo. In this post I’ll be talking about using PowerShell to manage Dell BIOS settings. ...

I just finished updating the script I’ve been using to bulk create collections in Configuration Manager. I know there are already many different examples of this same type of script out there, but I figured I’d share my take on it. The script can be downloaded from my GitHub: https://github.com/ConfigJon/ConfigMgr-Scripts/tree/master/Create-Collections Create_Collections.ps1 This script can be used to dynamically create user collections, device collections, and folder structure based on information in a CSV file. The script should be run as a user account with rights to connect to and create collections in Configuration Manager. The script should be run on a computer with the Configuration Manager Admin Console installed. The script will automatically search for the ConfigurationManager.psd1 file, attempt to import it, and connect to the specific site. ...

I’ve recently been working on a lot of app packaging, and I decided to take the opportunity to update my scripts. In this post I’ll cover 3 PowerShell functions that I found to be the most useful. The functions can be found on my GitHub. Invoke-MsiExec This function works with msiexec.exe. The function allows for installing or uninstalling a .msi based application. The function has a number of parameters: FilePath - The path to the .msi or .msp file Guid - The GUID of the MSI-based application to be uninstalled Install - Indicates that the /i switch should be used when calling msiexec.exe Uninstall - Indicates that the /x switch should be used when calling msiexec.exe Patch - Indicates that the /p switch should be used when calling msiexec.exe Arguments - A comma separated list of arguments to pass to msiexec.exe ExitCodes - A comma separated list of non-standard exit codes Some notes about the parameters: ...

This post was updated on September 11th, 2020. Update: Dell does now provide native WMI classes to manage BIOS passwords on newer models. For more information, see this post: Dell BIOS Password Management - WMI. For information on using the Dell PowerShell module to configure passwords on older models, continue reading this post. This is the third post in my series on how to manage BIOS / Firmware passwords with PowerShell. Previously, I’ve discussed Lenovo BIOS Password Management and HP BIOS Password Management. ...

This post was updated on February 20th, 2022. I’ve recently been writing a series of blog posts on how to manage BIOS and Firmware settings using PowerShell. When working with HP and Lenovo hardware I was able to modify the settings by connecting to the WMI classes that are surfaced on the hardware by default. With Dell this was not as straightforward. In order to access the Dell WMI classes that can be used to query and modify BIOS settings, the Dell Command | Monitor software needs to be installed. This posed another problem, as I wanted to be able to modify BIOS settings while in WinPE, and Dell Command | Monitor only installs in a full Windows OS. The solution to this issue was the Dell Command | PowerShell Provider. ...

This post was updated on October 18th, 2020. This post is one of 3 posts in my series on managing BIOS settings using PowerShell. I’ve also written about Dell and HP. In this post I’ll be talking about using PowerShell to manage Lenovo BIOS settings. The script can be downloaded from my GitHub: https://github.com/ConfigJon/Firmware-Management/tree/master/Lenovo Lenovo, WMI, and PowerShell Lenovo provides a WMI interface that can be used for querying and modifying BIOS settings on their hardware models. This means that we can use PowerShell to directly view and edit BIOS settings without the need for a vendor specific program. This script uses 6 of the Lenovo provided WMI classes. ...

This post was updated on September 18th, 2020. This post is one of 3 posts in my series on managing BIOS settings using PowerShell. I’ve also written about Dell and Lenovo. In this post I’ll be talking about using PowerShell to manage HP BIOS settings. The script can be downloaded from my GitHub: https://github.com/ConfigJon/Firmware-Management/tree/master/HP HP, WMI, and PowerShell HP provides a WMI interface that can be used for querying and modifying BIOS settings on their hardware models. This means that we can use PowerShell to directly view and edit BIOS settings without the need for a vendor specific program. This script uses 3 of the HP provided WMI classes. ...

This post was updated on September 18th, 2020. In my last blog post, (Lenovo BIOS Password Management), I talked about managing Lenovo BIOS passwords with PowerShell. I liked how that process worked, so I decided to create a similar process to handle HP BIOS passwords. Once again, the goal was to have a script that could automatically set, change, or clear BIOS passwords while providing logging and optional user prompts. In this post, I’ll cover the basics of how the script works and some limitations of the script. ...