Today we are going to show you how to fix the flashing screen issue when you just upgraded to Windows 10. This is a really annoying thing and we want to share the information on how to fix this problem.

If your screen is constantly flashing and you can’t open anything, you have to do a few steps.

Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE and at the bottom right corner of the screen you will see a power button. You have to click on it, but before doing this make sure that you hold down a SHIFT key.

Now it’s going to bring another menu.

You have to go to Troubleshoot, and then to Startup Settings and you will see a list of options. We are interested to reboot in Safe Mode.

Once you’ve booted in Safe Mode, you should press Windows key + R to open up a run tab here.

Type msconfig.exe and once this is open you have to go to the Services and click on the Service line to alphabetize everything. Now you should find Windows Error Reporting Service and untick it.

The same situation with Problem Reports and Solutions Control Panel Support, that’s another one to untick. Make sure that you did it properly and hit OK.

Reboot your system and the flashing will go away. We hope your problem has been resolved. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask via comments.

The post How to Fix Windows 10 Flashing Screen appeared first on TheITBros.

Today we are going to show you how to make system image backup on Windows 10. And this is a bit different than a system restore point. It’s actually a snapshot of your entire Windows installation as well as all setting configuration and data, which you can use to restore your system from almost any critical failure. So if your hard drive physically brakes down, you still be able to get everything back, exactly as it was before it went down.

But before you get started you will need a safe place to store the system image. Ideally you should have a completely separate hard drive attach to your computer or at least a DVD and a disk drive to burn it. Technically you can even repartition your primary hard drive to create a storage space for your system image, but if your hard drive will fail you going to lose both your Windows install and your system image.

So once you have a storage location, first thing to do is press the Windows button on your keyboard, type file history and press Enter.

From the window that pops up next go ahead and click the System Image Backup link at the bottom left corner.

After that look at the left section and click the Create a System Image button. At this point the system image tool should pop up.

The first menu here is asking you were you would like to store your backup. In the options are: hard drive, DVD or network. If you going with the hard drive, you can use this drop menu to select the storage location for your system image backup. When you are done here, go ahead and click Next.

From here it will ask you which drives you would like to create a System Image Backup. Your primary Windows drive in a boot sector will already be selected, but if you have any documents in other drives, you can select them as well.

After clicking Next on that screen you will get a chance to review your selections. If everything looks like it should, go ahead and click Start Backup. From here, depending on how many files and drives were selected, the backup process will take anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours or so. During the process you can use your machine as you would normally do.

That’s all! Let us know your backup experience in the comments below!

The post How to Create a System Image Backup on Windows 10 appeared first on TheITBros.

If you still having problems upgrading or installing Windows 10, we will help you. This article is going to explain the notions of your computer and install that you need to understand at the minimum. We will try to explain it as simple as possible, but it’s a really complex issue here. So, let’s start.

You’ve got this nice little window that says: “Hey, click there, got the free upgrade, reserve your copy, everything should go well, and everything should work”.

You realized that after five or six months since Windows 10 release you still haven’t got your Windows 10 upgrade. Or you realized that if you got an upgrade, but when you click on it you’ve waited hours and it didn’t do anything. Or you clicked and it started install and you got some kind of cryptic message like something happened with an error code that look like this: 0x80070005-0x90002. You need to know that you’re not alone, the majority of people that upgraded on Windows 10 did it through this little windows and it worked very well.

It seemed to be OK for the majority of people, but in some cases it didn’t go well. So you got to understand that there are two ways of installing Windows 10 and there are two things that you got to choose from. The first thing is upgrading from within your Windows, so it means that this is an upgrading from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. You’ve got also a possibility to upgrade from outside of Windows. That means you’ll be booted from a DVD or from USB thumb drive. And that’s make a big difference. Most of the problems that occur from upgrade is because you’re upgrading from within Windows and Windows has some issues with that. So it means that it might be possible to upgrade, but you have to do it from outside. We will show you have to do all the different installs.

So, step one is to try this. Try it at least two or three times. If it didn’t work first, try it again, restart your computer and try it again to just see if it works.

If that doesn’t work, then you have another choice. Go to this website: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

This is the download page of Windows 10. You’ve got what they call the Download Tool. How do you know if you got 32 or 64 bit version?

You have to go in Windows 8.1 start menu for example, and type “system”. Here you have a system information, that tells you which version you need. You have to know it and choose the correct version from the start.

Click the Download Tool and you’ll be greeted with this window:

You have two options. The first option is the same thing we tried to do before. You can try it and maybe it will work for you, but in most cases if it didn’t work before, it will not work again.

The second option creates an installation media for another PC. Choose and click Next. Here you have to choose the correct language, the correct edition and 64 or 32 bits.

What edition you should choose? If you’re in Windows 7 Starter or Windows 7 Home Premium – choose the Home Version. If you’re in Windows 7 Pro or Windows 7 Ultimate – choose Windows 10 Pro.

If you’ll choose the wrong version it will not activate and you just going to lose your time. Click Next.

Here two things. The first option is creating the USB flash drive.

Pop in USB flash drive in one of the USB ports and choose this option. Click Next and it’s going to create on that USB thumb drive, a bootable version of Windows 10 that you can set up from. Before you boot from it, go into your file explorer, choose your thumb drive and then click on Setup file. Once again, try to upgrade like that.

The second option is creating the ISO file. Choose and click Next. It’s going to ask you where you want to download the file. It’s going to create a file called Windows.iso. You can use that and create a DVD with it by using a piece of software like AnyBurn for example, that gives you the option to burn image file to disk.

Also, you can use tools like Rufus. That will enable you to create a bootable USB thumb drive with that image.
Now you’re installing from outside of Windows and there is a good chance that it’s going to work. We’ve upgraded about 50 computers since Windows 10 was released and the thing is all of them installed in some matter, but some of them we had to install with a USB flash drive or DVD, because some of them just didn’t want to upgrade from Windows itself.

But you have to understand, that if you boot from these flash drives or DVDs and starting an install, you have to choose upgrade first. That’s the first install you need to do will always be an upgrade. Because it’s the only free way to get the activation.

We hope one of these options will work. We know that it’s not an easy to understand, but try one of those options and if you’ve successfully upgraded don’t enter any keys. If you have Windows that asks a product key don’t enter anything, just skip. There is a skip button. Just skip and don’t mind. You are upgrading, you don’t need a product key, don’t search a product key.

OK, that’s pretty much how it works. If you do things right, chances are pretty high that you’ll have and installed Windows 10. But some of you are probably still having problems. That unfortunately does happen, and you know what? There are computers out there that are not compatible and it will never be. And there are computers that have some types of problems that won’t be solved.

So, try it out. Hopefully we’ve helped you upgrade your computer. If you have any comments, questions, or any problems, feel free to ask us.

The post Windows 10 upgrade: Complete guide to the different methods of upgrade if you run into problems appeared first on TheITBros.

Windows 10 is a new operating system. Quite frequently a lot of users shocked by what they have seen in the Privacy Options for Microsoft Windows 10. Using the express settings when you go through the configuration and installation process you may not even know what’s going on in those options. In this article we will show you this, because it’s just out of control.

Now let’s go to Settings, here we have the Privacy Settings.

Nobody knows what’s going on here. We recommend you to turn everything off and we will explain why.

The first options we will talk about is Change Privacy Options (you can find it at General tab).

This one is letting apps use your advertising ID for experiences across apps, by default this option is on if you use express settings. Windows 10 giving you an advertising ID using this option, not only Windows Live ID. It allows OS to target the Ads towards you and someone said this is like a cookie. But we don’t think so because it’s built in your system now, that doesn’t look like cookies for us. We recommend you to turn it off.

The next interesting Privacy Option is third one: it allows Windows 10 to send info about how you write to help Microsoft to improve typing and writing in the future. Don’t get us wrong, but if Microsoft is going to reinvent the type writer, we think that this is a great feature. But if Microsoft wants to know how we are writing what is this all about here? We know that they analyze the emails, analyze your phone calls to predict your next steps a little bit better. But most of us is on the PC for the most part and they want you to send information about how you write to them? What is that mean? Do you have a key logger in your Windows 10? We don’t know for sure and can’t say like that, but we recommend you to turn it off also, it’s on by default.

The next option is fourth. You are letting websites to provide locally relevant content by accessing your language list by default. We don’t think that it’s useful for us that websites will be reporting our language every time. We recommend you to turn it off too. We’ve done here.

You also have other Privacy Options on your Windows Live account. You can manage them by clicking on “Manage my Microsoft advertising and another personalization info”. On the Web you got even more and it’s also built in your OS.

And that’s not all! There’s a hole section in Privacy settings!

For example Location. You can leave it on if you feel it will be useful for you (for example you are using your phone as a tracking device). But we recommend you to disable other things at the Location options.

Let’s go ahead and move to Camera settings. The first thing you will see here is setting that allows apps to use your camera. We will tell you what app can use your camera – none of them! We recommend you to turn everything off here too.

Now let’s go to Microphone Privacy Options. Some apps need to use a microphone, we understand that. But we recommend you to disable that too and if you had a problem you just need to turn it back then.

Now let’s talk about Speech, inking & typing settings. The first thing you can see here is that Windows and Cortana wants to know you better. OS collecting your contacts, recent calendar events, speech and handwriting patterns, your typing history by default. Do you like this? We don’t. So we recommend you to turn it off also (click on “Stop getting to know me”, then “Turn off”).

The next thing is your Account info Privacy settings. It allows apps access your name, picture and other info. We sure that this is not good too and recommend you to turn it off.

Now Contacts settings. Here you can choose what apps can access your contacts. You can allow your Mail and Calendar to do that, but still it’s on your own risk.

Let’s move forward and go to Messaging Privacy options. Here you can choose apps that can read or send messages. At Radios setting you can let apps to control radios. We recommend you to turn off all of this also.

Now let’s take a look at Feedback & diagnostics. This option controls the amount of Windows diagnostics and usage data sent to Microsoft from your device. They don’t let you to turn it off and want your data no matter what. All you can do here is just set it to Basic (Enhanced is set by default).

The last one is Background apps Privacy Options. This options let apps run in the background. You can turn everything off and most of these apps will keep working whether you run them at background or not (maybe except Alarm & Clock).

So all of these things is on by the default. You can think that you are not doing anything wrong so it’s OK for you and you don’t care if every message, every call you did is acceptable for other people and they can listen or read it.

This article is made to help you to understand a nightmare situation with Privacy in Windows 10 and give you some solutions to protect yours. Hope it was useful!

The post Control your Privacy in Microsoft Windows 10 appeared first on TheITBros.

Hello guys! In this tutorial we will show you how to export an existing start screen for Windows 10 and then use the Group Policy to ensure those settings.

So basically as you can see you need to create a couple of groups. You can do this in a very simple way: you just simply need to drag and drop your icons. Once you’ve done that, you can move them around and give them a group name.

Once you’ve designed your Start menu the way you want, the next place you are going to go is Windows Powershell.

What you are looking to do is to run get-help Export-StartLayout command.

Basically it’s very simple to use. The next thing you need to do is to run Export-StartLayout –path \start123.xml.

Now if we will take a look at what is going inside this file (run notepad \Start Menu\) we will see that it is a basically xml representation of all the applications you have at the right of your Start menu.

The next thing we are going to do is to get this to our servers. Now we need to run net use s: \\dc\share, then copy new start123.xml file over our servers – run copy start123.xml y:. Now it’s on a share.

Log out as User1 and log on as User2. What you will see is that he doesn’t have the same Start menu right now, but we are on the right way.

Let’s go ahead and log out as User2 (click Sign Out). Now we are going to use the Group Policy to set this up. We are going to our Users and create a GPO in this domain.

After it’s done right click on it and go to Edit…

In Group Policy Management go to User Configuration, then Administrative templates, then click on Start Menu & Taskbar.

Click on Start Layout. As you can see this value only works for Windows 10. So we are going ahead and add it. At Start Layout File field enter \\dc\share\start123.xml. Go ahead and click OK. Now the Group Policy is engaged.

Now let’s login as User2 again. What we should see is that at this point Group Policy done its things and now you can see those Test groups are in users Start menu too. Group Policy now won’t let anybody change anything, users can’t drag & drop any icons and do other things in their Start menu now.

That’s it! We are hoping that it was helpful for you!

The post Manage Start Screen with Group Policy in Windows 10 appeared first on TheITBros.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to migrate Windows 10 and all installed data to a new hard drive. The same process applies if you are migrating to SSD. We will be migrating from a 250 GB hard drive to 1 TB drive.

Here is my main drive, which contains my operating system and all my files.

The 1 TB is also installed. To see it, we have to go to Disk Management, because it’s not formatted. So, right click This PC-> Manage-> Disk Management. As we can see, the 1 TB drive is not even initialized. In this case make sure MBR is selected and click OK to initialize.

Our source drive is Disk 0, which is my 250 GB hard drive. It contains my operating system and all data. Disk 1 is a destination drive. We will be cloning everything to this drive. Also, make sure that the destination drive is empty, and if you have any information there, make sure to back up, because the destination drive will be overwritten with the information on the source drive, in this case Disk 0. With that set, we are going ahead and have to close a Disk Management here.

Now, for this tutorial we will be using Paragon Hard Disk Manager Premium. The link is below:
https://paragon.cleverbridge.com/80/?affiliate=37323&scope=checkout&cart=137190

This program is not free anymore. You can probably download it for free, but the cloning feature will not work. This is a program we are using; this program doesn’t slow operating system like most of the free ones we have used before. So once it is installed, go ahead and run it.

Click on Migrate OS and read the following note carefully.

The destination drive will be replaced with the information from the source drive. Click Next and now it automatically detected the operating system drive and the wizard by itself is telling you that it is going to copy the Microsoft Windows 10 64-edition located on C drive, which is 250 GB hard drive with 16 GB used, to the 1 TB drive.

Remember, both drives in this case are serial ATA. Now you can also select what folders to copy, but by default all folders are selected. Now check mark «Use all available space for partition with OS». If you do not check mark, it will create a smaller partition on the larger drive. If you do not know anything about partition, make sure to check mark. Then click on Copy.

The copy process can take a while depending on how much information there is to copy. Once it done, make sure to read this.

We are going to summarize it for you. You have two options.

Using the first one you can remove source drive once it done and keep the destination drive as your main drive. The second one: you can go into the BIOS and select the destination drive to be the first boot device. In our case, we removed the source drive. Go ahead and click Close.

After that, we should reboot Windows 10 PC, remove the source drive and keep the destination drive, which is 1 TB drive. However, if you want to keep both, make sure to select the destination drive to be the first boot device in the BIOS.

Now as you can see, it is restarting normally as if nothing happened and with a new hard drive. You can click on My PC and notice that you use the 1TB drive, not the 250 GB.

All your data and operating system is activated and ready for work.

That is all. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments section below.

The post Clone Windows 10 and Installed Data to a New Hard Drive appeared first on TheITBros.

Hello guys! We decided to show you all about uninstalling Windows 10 from Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. The whole concept of uninstalling Windows 10 is because you are not happy, you are not satisfied with your current workstation. So, Microsoft was nice enough to give us a 30 day trial and allowing us to downgrade back to our old Windows. But the problem is a lot of you are having issues, and the reason why you are having issues is because you have pushed out the operating system to your machine manually. That why you do not have that option to downgrade.

So, we will show you how to do this (we are using 10565 Windows 10 build).

Go to Start -> Settings -> Update and Security. Now, if you have this option and you go to Recovery, you will be able to downgrade to Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.

A lot of you don’t have that option, so you are freaking out. The reason why is that you do not have that option because you manually pushed it out and Windows was not ready for your machine. We know that a lot of people have problems with their graphics card, screens or monitors flickering using Windows 10.

How can you get to your old operating system?

So, we are going inside the File explorer, and for Recovery option to work properly you have to have Windows.Old folder. This entire folder is your old operating system, but a lot of people don’t have it.

If you do not have this option or if you go inside the File explorer within Windows 10 and cannot find Windows.Old folder, there is a solution.

We hate to tell you this, but you are not going to like the answer. Microsoft knows the pain that you are having. So, you need to go to Microsoft website and download Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 ISO files to burn it into a flash drive or DVD. Basically that means that you are going to have wipe clean your machine and reinstall the operating system back. That means that you have to find all your drivers for a particular model that you are using. For example, if you are using Toshiba, you have to go to Toshiba website and locate the model number. After that, you have to download the network drivers, the hard drive drivers, the monitor drivers and all those drivers to get your machine up and running.

Some of you are lucky, because you probably have a recovery disk that came with your purchase of the machine. It probably came with Windows 8.1 or Windows 7. You can just pop that in and just restore your machine. But before you even wipe, reformat and reinstall the operating system back to its current state, please back up your information. When you reinstall the operating system, you are completely wiping it.

Now let’s say we want to go back to Windows 7, because the machine was actually upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 x86. Go to Microsoft website and click on Windows 7 button and there is another catch.

The catch is you have to have a serial number, so the only way to get an ISO from Microsoft is if you enter your product key. You are probably cannot find the product key…

Some kind of lucky if you flip your laptop or you look at the top of your workstation, and probably going to see a nice little Microsoft Windows label indicating the 25 characters. Enter those 25 characters, verify and if everything goes well, you should be able to Download the ISO.

Now, if you do not have those 25 characters, next thing is trying to contact Microsoft and prove them that you have a legit copy of Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.

Once you get an ISO, Microsoft is nice enough to provide you USB/DVD download tool. Just download it and follow commands. It is pretty easy to launch up the application. You have to choose only two things: the ISO file destination and the bootable device. You can create DVD disk or you can also create a bootable USB thumb drive.

Once you have that, you have to shut down your machine, plug in the flash drive. Now go to the boot menu in BIOS and use the USB.

There are a couple of sections that you have to pay attention:

Backup all information from local drives, user profiles, desktop, documents, downloads. It is because you probably have drivers or application that you downloaded in the past and you don’t want to find those drivers again. If you have libraries or music files, download your music and copy it to safe location.

So, once you have all that backed up, it’s time to wipe clean it. Go to the downloaded Windows and click on Setup.

Select Install Now.

Now setup started to copy the temporary files. That is always a good thing, but there is a possibility it might not work and the reason why is because Windows 10 is higher that Windows 7. It takes a while, but in the end it will offer you to get the latest updates. We are going to say No, because we do not need this. Just click Next and go to the next window.

Now we have two options: Upgrade or Custom installation.

We do not need an upgrade, because Windows 10 cannot be upgraded to Windows 7.

Let’s go to Custom (advanced). Here we need to choose the drive we want Windows to be installed. Click on Next and you will see a warning windows which contains something like this: The position that you have selected must contain files from previous Windows installation. Just click OK and install it.

Before doing this, please be sure you have backup all your data, because you won’t be able to restore it.

For those of you who purchased Windows 10 machine and not happy with the Windows 10 operating system, you have to purchase Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 license key.

That is all. We hope you will not have any problems. But if you do, you are free to leave comments right below.

The post How to downgrade Windows 10 if it doesn’t give you the option appeared first on TheITBros.

Hello guys! Today we will review the Windows ICD. This is an awesome tool, which allows you to customize your Windows image by importing applications, updating drivers and all that good stuff. However, Microsoft provided us with an awesome graphical user interface.

The first thing you need to do is do not touch anything in application, because you need to set up your environment before you even do this.

So, you need to create a folder, where we are going to drop all our custom ICD builds. We have created a folder ICD Images inside a C: drive. It is not the best practice, but we are doing it as a testing environment. We suggest you to place it in somewhere else!

Now we are going to create a v1.0 folder here. Then we are going to copy the folder name and create another one: v2.0 folder. This is the place we will drop all the stuff.

The next thing you need to do before you even get into the application and start building stuff is you need to grab an ISO and extract the content from ISO or a DVD in some folder.

So, right after this go to the ICD application and click on New Windows image customization. Now you have to name your project.

Click on Next and you will see the image format selection. You should not change anything, so click on Next.

Now we need to select our image. Click on Browse and go to that folder, where you extracted all those files from ISO.

Now you need to find install.wim file. It is actually located in Sources.

Click on Open and depending on what .vim file you import, you will see detailed information.

If you have any provisioning packages, you can add it here, if you not – just skip it and click on Finish.

Once it done you are going to get all the settings that you need.

The first place we are going to is a View. Go into Common IT Pro settings and this will give you options to Runtime settings.

Now within Runtime settings go to Accounts, then click on ComputerAccount.

You need ComputerAccount to add your computer into a domain, so we are going to add it to Administrator, because this account has full access to our Active Directory. It will help us to add this machine into our domain controller.

We do not have any AccountOU. If you want to get more specific and dropping into a particular organization, you can do that, but we are not going to do that.

Also you need to add your computer name. The domain name is going to be a domain where the machine is placed. After this type the correct password in the section below.

Now go to Policies -> Microsoft Edge. Here you can change HomePage URL.

Another section within the policies that we like is Settings. So go inside Settings and here you will have more cool options to work with. For example, you can AllowThemes. Another option we really like is AllowPowerSleep. If you don’t want to allow anyone from your network to change the date and time, you can do it with AllowDateTime option. “1” turns it on, “0” turns it off.

Now go to Updates. For those of you, who wants to control the updates schedule, you can change default value to particular day. You can also allow auto updates.

Again, guys, it is really up to you. You can customize your environment in the way you want.

Once you did with IT Pro Setting, you should go to OEM settings.

There are a lot of stuff you can change there.

For example, you can add the Update package path. Also, you can actually navigate to where you have drivers. In our case, we have a package with the network drivers, so we are going to add this package.

In addition, you can customize the Internet Explorer. There are favorite bar items, favorites list and favorites on top.

If you want, you can customize your Start menu and many other things.

Once you make modification within the Windows ICD its time to export or create the build.

Click on Export, then select Provisioning Package.

Now you will see a window with the build.

Click on Next and in the following window you can select the encryption option. It is just up to you, so if you have any stuff that you do not want any eyes looking at, you can encrypt it.

Also, if you have any sign package of certificates, you can import them here as well. Click on Next and now you are going to build.

The process takes no more than a minute, it is really fast. Once it done, click Finish.

Now it is time to create a build.

Just click on Create -> Production Media and select the WIM format to build.

After that you should Enable Compact OS and click on Next.

We do not want to enable audit mode, so in the next window we click Next.

Now we are actually going to save it to a folder, but you are able also to create a bootable USB drive.

In the next window, we are going to browse for folder that we created earlier. Select it, click on Next and we are going to build.

All right guys, it is completed!

The next step is either you pick the bootable USB and you could just take your flash drive and boot from that or if you are using MDT, you can import this build inside your MDT.

Again, we can’t really tell you guys what is best for your environment, there is so many options within the Windows ICD.

That is all. If you have any questions, leave comments in the section below.

The post How To Build and Deploy an Image for Windows 10 on Windows ICD appeared first on TheITBros.

Hello everyone! In this article we will show you how to download and install Administrative tools for Windows 10. It is going to give you all the remote MMC tools that you require to manage your Windows servers remotely.

First, you need to download this from Microsoft website here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=45520

Also, you have to download Administrative templates from here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48257

Once it is installed, restart the system. Just give this time to prepare and configure Windows.

After that go to Start menu and in the search area type Change or remove a program.

Next you need to go to Turn Windows features on or off. Just click on this and you will see a little box.

We should enable couple of areas. Enable Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services, also select RAS Connection Manager Administrator Kit (CMAK).

Once you did it, click Ok and wait a little bit. It is going to install those things for us and right after that you should close this window.

To view a list of administrative tools that we have just installed go to Control Panel and select Administrative Tools.

You can see that there is a lot of tools available to us and we have got Remote Desktop Services here and we also got Active Directory stuff.

That is all. We hope you guys enjoy this one. If you have any questions, free to leave them in comments section below.

The post How To Install Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 10 appeared first on TheITBros.

Hello guys. In this article we are going to be dealing with MDT 2013 Update 1 and pushing out a Windows 10 upgrade.

So let’s start.

This time we have a Windows 7 virtual machine.

Right click on Computer, go to Properties.

Now to push out and upgrade with MDT you are going to make sure you have the exact version of Windows 10. So, if you have Windows 7 Enterprise, make sure that you push out Windows 10 Enterprise to do the upgrade. And if you have Windows 7 Professional, make sure you have Windows 10 Professional.

The first thing you need to do is to create a task sequence. But before this, you need to make sure that you have the latest MDT server. So, let’s go to Help and click on About Microsoft Deployment Workbench. Make sure you have 6.3.8298.100 version.

If you don’t, you are not going to have this specific template when you create a task sequence to do the upgrade.

So, press Ok and in the left section go to Deployment Shares -> MDT Deployment Share -> Task Sequences. We have already created a folder called Windows 10 x64 Upgrade. You have to create that folder and just right click on it and go to New Task Sequence.

In the new window you have to give it a test ID, give it a name and the task sequence comments. Click on Next and you will see a very important part. Just make sure your MDT is fully updated. If not you are not going to get this option. Select Standard Client Upgrade Task Sequence, that is what we want.

Click on Next and pick up your operating system.

Once you pick your operating system, click on Next. Now, select Do not specify a product key at this time, because Microsoft providing Windows 10 for free.

We are going to click on Next. You can enter all the information about OS if you want and click on Next.

Now do not provide a password. The reason why is because your Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 already has an admin with a password, so you do not need to set that. So, just leave that blank and just say Do not specify an Administrator password at this time.

Now click on Next and just finish it off.

Now double click on the one that you did and go to Task Sequence. If gives you a lot of options, which is pretty cool. It allows you to do Windows updates, also allows you to push out applications during a deployment or your upgrade process, which is pretty cool.

We have disabled Install Applications part, despite the fact that by default it’s enabled.

Only way for this to work is you have to log into your deployment share and then run LiteTouch.vbs deployment.

So, we are going to show you, guys, what is that mean.

Just go to our Windows 7 virtual machine, click on Start button and type \\192.168.129.145\deploymentshare$ and click Enter.

Notice. You have to use IP address of your machine.

Now we need to enter network password. Make sure you are logged in into account, which have full access to your deployment share.

Then you need to go to the Scripts folder and run LiteTouch.vbs file.

After that the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit going to pop up and you will see all the task sequences you have. Just make sure you are picking your Windows 10 x64 Upgrade task sequence.

Now, click on Next and go get a cup of coffee and that’s it, because this in-place upgrade takes forever (>1 hour).

Alright guys, once it done, you have to log in. Just use the password from original machine. Because this is a first time, you are going to see some animations.

That is all. Now you can upgrade to Windows 10 using MDT 2013 Update 1. If you have any questions, you are free to leave comments in the section below.

The post Upgrade to Windows 10 Using MDT 2013 Update 1 appeared first on TheITBros.

So you finally upgrade your Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 machine to Windows 10 and you’ve been having so much problems that you want to do a Clean installation. There are two ways to do it: the first one is an easy way, which is the reset, second is complete Windows 10 Reinstall.

Reset this PC option

Let’s review the first option in details.

Within your Windows 10 you have to click on the Start button, and then go into Settings. Once your Settings dialog box pop up, click on Update & Security. After that go to Recovery and from here you can Reset this PC.

When you get started you have to select one of the ways: Keep my files or Remove everything.

Keep my files option removes apps and settings, but keeps your personal files.

Removes everything option removes all your personal files, apps and settings.

Complete Windows 10 Reinstall

But now we are going to talk about the second option. This option for those of you who just want to completely reinstall Windows 10. Where would you get the DVD? Where would you get the ISO? Where would you get the stuff?

Read also: How to downgrade Windows 10

Microsoft provided us with this nice little tool called Media Creation Tool. You can download it by clicking on the link.

Run it once it downloaded. It is going to pop up a nice little window and give you two options. One option is to Upgrade now and the other option is to Create a bootable media. We are not going to use the first option because we already in Windows 10. So click on Create installation media for another PC.

In the next section you have to select the language, Windows edition and type of architecture. After that just click on Next.

Now it gives you two options of how you want to create the bootable media. You can create a bootable USB flash drive or create an ISO file to burn it to a DVD.

We are going to create an ISO file, so let’s start.

First of all, we have to name the file and specify the file location. Next the downloading process will begin. The process takes between an hour and an hour and a half. Once it done you should burn the downloaded ISO file to a DVD.

Read also: How To Build and Deploy an Image for Windows 10 on Windows ICD

Now, it’s time to clean install of Windows 10. If you guys do this installation, it is going to completely wipe. Just reinstall your machine and boot from CD/DVD.

If you did everything right you will see the starting window. Just click on Next and in the following window click on Install now.

It is going to ask your activation key. Remember, Microsoft is giving us Windows 10 for free for a year. So if you have this dialog box just click on I don’t have a product key.

In the next section it is going to give you the option: Install Windows 10 Pro or Windows 10 Home. We are going to install the Home version. Click on Next and from here let’s agree to the License.

Click on Next and select the Custom: Install Windows only (advanced) type of installation. The reason why we choose custom installation is because the other option is upgrading and we want to just clean install Windows 10.

Select the local drive where you want to install Windows and click on Next. It is going to completely wipe it, reformat it and install Windows 10.

And that is it. Hope you guys enjoy this article. If you have any questions, you are free to leave comments in the comment box below.

The post How to Clean Install Windows 10 appeared first on TheITBros.

In this article we want to show you guys how easy it is actually to deploy Windows 10 using System Center Configuration Manager. It’s a lot different and a lot easier than it was with Windows 7 or Windows 8. There are new tools to get Windows 10 out there very easily.

We are going to jump into SCCM. This time we use SCCM 2012 SP2 version, but you can use SP1 version as well.

A newer version does give you additional functionality. Mainly what the difference is here you can do in-place upgrade of operating system. This is a pretty powerful tool to get Windows 10 out there quickly. You don’t have to worry about any enormous staff when you do migration using MDT or SCCM. For example, you don’t have to worry about drivers. Also Windows 10 in-place upgrade keeping all the applications and all the settings.

So, we are going to check it right now. The first thing we need to do is to download Windows10Upgrade1506.zip file.

You have to download the file in the bottom of the page:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/configmgrteam/archive/2015/06/16/revised-content-for-the-win10-in-place-upgrade-via-task-sequence-for-configmgr.aspx

This file basically has all the scripts required to do in-place upgrade to Windows 10. After that extract this file here and you will see that in the folder we have got another .zip file. Later we are going to import this file into SCCM.

You need to open up Windows vNext Upgrade_files folder and go to Media folder. As you can see this folder is empty right now.

Now we have to extract our Windows 10 Enterprise .ISO file in this folder.

After that go ahead and configure our SCCM. Our configuration manager environment doesn’t have any operating system staff configured. We are starting with the clean slate because we don’t have any drivers, images, upgrade packages.

Read also: Upgrade to Windows 10 Using MDT 2013 Update 1

What we are going to do is just click on Task Sequences and import the task sequence. Right here we have to specify the path to the .zip file which was previously extracted.

It’s going to create these new packages so you can see there is a media directory and the script directory. Click on Next and we are done.

So now we have a new task sequence. Actually you can edit it, but right now you don’t need to change anything in here because there is nothing that you need to configure out of the box.

Let’s have a look at the packages here. We have got our media package and what we need to do is just right click on it and go to Distribute Content.

Now add the distribution point and click on Next.

Now we have to wait a little bit and when the circle turns green it’s done.

We are ready to go at this point. What we need to do right now is to deploy your task sequence. Right click on it, deploy and it will open Deploy Software Wizard.

Now we have to choose the right collection which is Windows 10 In-Place Upgrade.

Click Next and go to User Experience settings.

Here you have to tick on Software installation and System restart and go Next to Distribution Points settings. Tick on all the setting and go ahead.

Well that’s it.

Now we have a new deployment. As you can see we have 100% compliance.

This is pretty vanilla Windows 8 system so we want to do a couple of things. Let’s create some documents on a desktop. We just want to show you that this is going to basically copy a user profile.

Read also: Remote control in Configuration Manager 2012

Also let’s take a look what’s installing here. We have a Juniper VPN client, Office 2013 and other programs. So, let’s see if all those things will be there when the process is done.

What we are going to do now is just make this client check in. This happens every hour by default but we are going to make a check in SCCM. After that we will see the notification.

Click on that notification and in available software it is going to be Windows vNext Upgrade. Select in and click on Install.

Now the downloading and installing process will start.

Once it done the system is going to reboot and after that it will upgrade to Windows 10.

After upgrading you will see the welcome screen. Couple of minutes and you will be there. We can find that all our documents are here. Let’s make sure other apps are here as well. We have really got everything migrated here: our profiles came through, our applications came through etc.

That’s pretty much it. Let us know if you have any questions. You are free to leave them in the comment section below.

The post Deploy Windows 10 In-Place Upgrade using SCCM appeared first on TheITBros.

Today we will show you how to enable, create and perform a system restore point in Windows 10. Let’s get started here by clicking on Start menu. Go to Search and type in “recovery”. Click on Recovery and it will open Recovery Control Panel.

Once it is opened, we want to go ahead and enable restore within Windows 10 by clicking on Open system restore, the third option here. Then window will appear and and you can see here that the system restore is presently turned off.

We are going to configure system protection to turn it on.

Here you can see that system restore is turned off. After that let’s go to Configure.

At first you need to check on Turn on system protection and that will enable restore at this point.

Read also: How To Build and Deploy an Image for Windows 10 on Windows ICD

Then we can go down below here and allocate as much disk space as we like to the system restore.

It’s up to you how much you want allocate for this. You can always come back and readjust it if it’s not enough.

Go ahead and click on Apply.

Now we are ready to create a system restore for our hard drive C: for Windows 10. So let’s go ahead and click on Create. We get a window that is prompting us for the name of the restore point that we want to create.

You can make one up that’s work for you. Once it’s done, click on Create.

The process of system restore point creating can take from a few minutes or even a couple of hours. It depends on the performance of your machine.

Once it is done, you will get the message that restore point was created successfully.

Read also: Repair Windows 10 using Automatic Repair

Keep in mind that we can also do a system restore from this window as well. So let’s go ahead and do that by clicking on System Restore.

It will open up the window where we can restore system files and settings. Click on Next and select a restore point. If you have multiple images that you’ve done in the past, you can choose one of them. After that click on Next and confirm your restore point.

Read also: How to Create a System Image Backup on Windows 10

System restore cannot be interrupted, so if you want to go ahead click on Yes. Make sure you do not disturb your computer at this point.

Now your Windows 10 system will restart and then you will get the final message that says «System Restore completed successfully». So, that’s all. If you have any problems with it, you are free to leave the comments in the section below.

The post System Restore Point in Windows 10: How to Enable, Create and Perform appeared first on TheITBros.

In this article we are going to show you how to set up a static IP address in Windows 10. If you are successfully on a network and have got dynamic IP address, you may want to make the IP address static.

The first thing you need to do is to right click on the Start button and go to Run. In the Run window you should type cmd and click Ok. After that you will get your command window, where you have to enter ipconfig /all command and press Enter.

That’s going to give you a whole bunch of information, which you may need to scroll up until you will find Ethernet0 adapter. Here we have IPv4 Address (this time it’s 192.168.0.15) and it’s dynamic.

Now we want to make the IP address static. We need to use the information from command prompt to do this. So let’s go ahead.

Read also: How to Setup an FTP Server in Windows 10

At first we need to open up Network connections by right clicking on the Start button. Find the internet connection that you are going to modify. Right click on that connection and go to Properties.

Now, look for Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click on its Properties.

This will give you IP version 4 properties window and this is where we are going to put in our specific IP address.

So, let’s click Use the following IP address, which automatically makes active Use the following DNS server addresses. Currently our IP address is 192.168.0.15, but we are going to use our static IP address 192.168.0.200, so we need just to put this IP address in the first section.

Read also: Speed Up FileZilla FTP Transfers

When we click on Subnet mask that gets filled in automatically for us.

Now, we need to enter our Default gateway, so look over your command prompt. It tells us exactly what that is – 192.168.0.1.

The same situation with DNS servers, but you also can use OpenDNS. Just go to their website and find out about them if you want.

In our case, we are going to use OpenDNS, so we need to use these values:
208.67.222.123
208.67.220.123

Otherwise, you can use the existing DNS servers.

After that, click Ok and then click Close. It’s going to do some authentication things, detecting if there are any problems. Finally, it said that it couldn’t identify the problem. Go ahead and close that.

Now we can confirm that we are still online by jumping into browser and going to the random web page. That’s it. We hope you found this useful, but if you have any questions, just leave them in the comments section below.

The post How to Set up Static IP Address in Windows 10 appeared first on TheITBros.

If you want to upgrade your system to Windows 10, but it does not work fine and you have an error code 00000A58, this article will help you to fix this problem.

As you might remember, the sequence of tasks for in-place upgrade will appear only in the new version of SCCM vNext, but right now System Center Configuration Manager Team rolled out the scripts and made the task sequence for migrating from Windows 7/8/8.1 to Windows 10. You can read about it here: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/configmgrteam/2015/06/16/revised-content-for-the-windows-10-in-place-upgrade-via-task-sequence-for-configuration-manager/

There is nothing complicated about it. It is important to use an original image from your MVLSC. Just import a task sequence from the archive, deliver to distribution points, deploy to the collection and enjoy the result.

But the story is not about that. When you start the update, you have encountered an error like this:

Failed to run the action: Recover from Setup Failure. Unknown error (Error: 00000A58; Source: Unknown)
Failed to run the last action: Recover from Setup Failure. Execution of task sequence failed. Unknown error (Error: 00000A58; Source: Unknown)

There is the same error described in the ConfigMgr Team blog comments section, but nobody there knows how to fix it.

So in our case we have to open smsts.log (this log can be found in \Windows\CCM\logs).

Hash could not be matched for the downloaded content. Original ContentHash =
E3B0C44298FC1C149AFBF4C8996FB92427AE41E4649B934CA495991B7852B855,
DownloadContentAndVerifyHash() failed. 80091007.
DownloadContentAndVerifyHash ( pszPackageID, L»SMSPackage», saHttpContentSources, saSMBContentSources, saMulticastContentSources, sDestination, dwFlags, L»», 0, dwPackageFlags, mapNetworkAccess ), HRESULT=80091007
DownloadContentLocally (pszSource, sSourceDirectory, dwFlags, hUserToken, mapNetworkAccess), HRESULT=80091007
Failed to resolve the source for SMS PKGID=ASD000FA, hr=0x80091007
Install Software failed to run command line, hr=0x80091007
Process completed with exit code 2148077575

In the Monitoring –> Content Status section you can see a package with PKGID=ASD000FA log and 100% status, but you can see that there is a problem with package size.

Now you should go back to Software Library –> Packages and open up Windows vNext Upgrade Media properties. Check mark on Copy the content in this package to a package share on distribution points. Wait until the package will arrive at the distribution point.

Read also: Deploy Windows 10 In-Place Upgrade using SCCM

That’s it.

Now run the sequence of tasks for migration on the client side. As you can see, it’s easy to upgrade from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10.

In-place Upgrade restrictions

If you are using key /Auto:Upgrade for migration from Windows 7/8/8.1 to Windows 10 (including applications, user files, system configuration), you can’t:

• use custom images;
• change the architecture;
• change system language;
• switch from BIOS to UEFI;
• edit the disk partitions;
• downgrade edition (from Enterprise to Professional, for example).

In all other cases (Wipe-and-Load) you can use the usual way using Configuration Manager, MDT or USMT.

The post 00000A58 error code: In-Place Upgrade to Windows 10 appeared first on TheITBros.

In this article we are going to show you how to fix an issue, when your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart. This error does not let you log into the system, so we need to fix it. You should notice that this error message will pop up only for a few seconds and then suddenly the system will restart again.

After restart you will see that your PC is preparing for automatic repair and after some time it is start diagnosing your PC. Finally you will receive the screen showing that Your PC did not start correctly. Here we have two options: Restart and Advanced options.

Before we are going to Advanced options for resolving this issue, let us tell you why this situation happens. There are multiple reasons, which include changes in registry, recent changes in Hardware of the system, any recent driver installation which went wrong or improper shutdown of the system which includes forceful shutdown.

Let’s get back to the Automatic Repair screen. From here, if you restart the system, it comes with the same error. So, click on Advanced options.

–

Here you have 3 options: Continue, Troubleshoot or Turn of your PC.

If you click on Continue, it will not do anything and you will end up with restarting again. What we need to do is just click on the Troubleshoot option. Now, go to Advanced options and then you will see multiple options.

The first one is System restore. This option will help you if you have created a restore point. We haven’t created any restore points, so this option is not going to help us.

There is a couple of other options, but we have to go to Command Prompt. So, click on it and it will open up cmd.exe as administrator.

Now, we are going to restore the registry. We have seen the reasons for this issue and one of the reasons is a change in registry. So, let’s restore the register to its original state.

Go to C drive by writing C: .

After that we have to go to CD Windows\System32.

After that type in CD config.

Now we want to see the files here. Type in DIR and click Enter.

As you can see there is a folder RegBack, go into that folder with CD Regback.

As you can see, there are 5 files (DEFAULT, SAM, SECURITY, SOFTWARE and SYSTEM). These are the registry backups.

Now, go back to the config folder by writing CD.. . After that, type in DIR to see the files in that folder. As you can see now, there are 5 files with the same names. But there is a difference. The files in RegBack folder is for backup, and the files in the config folder are using now.

Read also: How to Create a System Image Backup on Windows 10

So, we just need to replace files in the config folder with files from the RegBack folder. But we don’t want to delete files from the config folder, because it’s safer to just rename them. Let’s do it.

You can rename DEFAULT file by writing REN DEFAULT DEFAULT1. It will rename DEFAULT file into DEFAULT1. Do the same thing with the other 4 files.

So, once all these files have been renaming, we are going to copy these 5 files from the RegBack folder to the config folder.

Type in CD RegBack to go to the RegBack folder. Now we have to copy all files to the config folder, so just type in COPY * C:\Windows\System32\config.

Now go to the previous directory and type in DIR. As you can see, we did it properly, so type in EXIT.

Now click on Turn of your PC and after reboot you will see that your system starts normally. That’s all.

The post How to fix Your PC Ran Into a Problem and Needs to Restart appeared first on TheITBros.

Hey guys! Today we are going to talk about the Command Prompt. A lot of you probably don’t know that you can customize your Command Prompt in Windows 10. So, we will show you how to do it. Let’s start.

Click on the Start button and choose Command Prompt (with Admin privileges). Once you are in Command Prompt, you can go to full screen. Now, right click on the top of the window and go to Properties.

You have got all sorts of options, so you can easily change cursor size, the buffer size for a command line or text selection. Also, you can change edit options (QuickEdit Mode, Insert Mode, Enable Ctrl key shortcuts, Filter clipboard contents on paste).

Read also: Return the classic look of date and time panel in Windows 10

If you want to change font, go to the Font section. Here you can change the size of your characters or even the font type. It’s really cool to help you use the Command Prompt.

You have a layout section which gives you the height and width of the buffer size or the window size. Also, you have window position, so if you want you can customize it.

And of course you can go to Colours. Here you can change screen background color, screen text color. Also, you can change opacity, so you can actually make the command prompt transparent if you want. We got this, we see part of our desktop through it.

These are all the options you have, so you can easily customize your command prompt. Just click on the top of the window and go to Properties. Now you can close the windows.

The next time you start a command prompt, it will remember the options. That’s pretty much it. If you have any questions, you are free to leave them in the comments section below.

The post Customize Command Prompt in Windows 10 appeared first on TheITBros.

In this article we will show you how to use PowerShell and Windows System Preparation Tool to prepare a highly customized, personal Windows 10 install image. Before starting the installation, we need to make sure that our computer or virtual machine is not connected to network, because the sysprep process will later fail if the PC was connected to Internet during the installation. You need to notice that we are using Build 9926 of Windows 10, so maybe this bug will be fixed in later builds. Let’s start this process.

Step 1 – Boot to Audit Mode

Start Windows installation normally. After reboot or two Windows is installed and process stops waiting your input. At this point we need to click on the Use express settings button. On next dialog you should not type a username, so don’t enter it.

Instead, press and hold down the CTRL+SHIFT+F3 keys combination. Windows will now reboot to a special customization mode, the Audit Mode.

As no user profiles exist yet, Windows will use its built-in administrator account to sign in to Audit Mode. There is only one visible sign to mark that you have entered the Audit Mode desktop, the Sysprep dialog in the middle of the display. But we don’t need it right now, so click on the Cancel button.

Read also: Sysprep a Windows 7 Machine – Start to Finish

Until now the installation was done without a network connection. So, you can connect your PC to network and Internet now.

Step 2 – Download and Install the Windows 10 ADK

What we are going to do next is to download and install the Windows 10 Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK). First of all we need to install the Windows System Image Manager (WSIM), a part of the Windows ADK. You can download it from the links below:

Home link
Direct Link

Once it is downloaded, run the installation file. Here you don’t need to change the location, so click on Next. After that accept the license agreement and go ahead.

Now you need to select the features you want to install. In our case, we just need to install only WSIM, so put the mark only on Deployment Tools and click on Install.

Step 3 – Install OEM information and logo

It’s very easy to install OEM information and logo. You just need to create the .reg file and put information that you want. In our case we put in the following content:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OEMInformation]
“Logo”=”C\\WINDOWS\\oem\\OEMlogo.bmp”
“Manufacturer”=”TheITBros, LLC”
“Model”=”Windows 10 Pro Image 10-1-2015”
“SupportHours”=”9am to 5pm ET M-F”
“SupportURL”=http://theitbros.com

Now, you need to create the oem folder in C:\Windows and put there your logo. Once it is done, just open up the .reg file that we have created earlier and it will automatically add it to the registry.

Step 4 – Begin customization in Audit Mode

Now we will install all the applications and settings we would like to be present in the default user profile. Default profile is used as base profile when you later create users on your Windows PC.

To install default all user apps we will use OneGet, an integrated module of PowerShell. We cannot just go to the Start Menu and to the Search, because they are disabled in Windows 10 Audit Mode. So, we need to start PowerShell manually by browsing deep into Windows folder and starting it from there.

Go to C:\Windows\syswow64\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0 and then run powershell_ise application.

First thing we need to do is extend our rights to run scripts, in order to be able to install software from a package provider later on.

All we need is just type Set-Executionpolicy Unrestricted command.

Now we need to use the package manager or provider. The package manager we will use now is called Chocolatey. It needs unrestricted script execution policy, which is why we set it first thing after the PowerShell had started.
To add a provider we need to type Get-Packageprovider Chocolatey command.

Step 5 – Install the software you need

To install all the software that we need, we just have to use the Install-Package script. Let’s say we want to install Opera, Google Chrome, VLC, Adobe Reader, 7Zip and Zoomit.

To do it, you need to type Install-Package Opera, GoogleChrome, VLC, AdobeReader, 7Zip, Zoomit –Force command.

Step 6 – Uninstall built-in apps

Also you can uninstall built-in apps, but it’s really up to you. So, if you don’t want to uninstall built-in apps, just skip this step.

Paste the following scripts onto the PowerShell command line and press Enter.

Get-AppxPackage *3dbuilder* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *windowsalarms* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *Appconnector* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *windowscalculator* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *windowscommunicationsapps* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *windowscamera* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *CandyCrushSaga* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *officehub* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *skypeapp* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *getstarted* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *zunemusic* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *windowsmaps* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *Messaging* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *solitairecollection* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *ConnectivityStore* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *bingfinance* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *zunevideo* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *bingnews* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *onenote* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *people* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *CommsPhone* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *windowsphone* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *photos* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *WindowsScan* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *bingsports* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *windowsstore* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *Office.Sway* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *Twitter* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *soundrecorder* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *bingweather* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *xboxapp* | Remove-AppxPackage
 Get-AppxPackage *XboxOneSmartGlass* | Remove-AppxPackage

Step 7 – Create an Answer file

Now we need to create an Answer File. An answer file is a set of instructions in an XML file. When sysprep is run, it reads these instructions, what changes it should make to the Windows image.

At first we need to create a catalog file. For that we need the install.wim file from a Windows install disk or ISO file.

Note. Windows 10 Build 9926 install.wim file for some reason cannot be used for the catalog file. This will be fixed in future builds, for sure. But for now we have a workaround.

To get an answer file for our Build 9926, at first we have to create the catalog using Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 Builds 9841, 9860 or 9879 install.wim file, and later edit the answer file.

Find the install.wim on any install media for above mentioned Windows versions and copy to the desktop of the PC you are using for this process now.

The install.wim can be found in Sources folder in any Windows install media. We are using the install.wim from Windows 8.1 Update 1.

Open Windows System Image Manager.

Location of the Windows System Image Manager is:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\Assessment and Deployment Kit\Deployment Tools\WSIM\imgmgr.exe

Now, create a new answer file, and select the install.wim we just copied to the desktop.

Creating the catalog will take quite a long time.

Once it is done, we need to do the most important thing, set the CopyProfile value to TRUE. This setting is telling Sysprep to copy all our customizations to default user profile.

Once it is done, let the Windows SIM validate your answer file and check it for errors. Click on Tools -> Validate.

In our case it is nothing to be worried about, only warnings about some deprecated settings no longer possible to change, and notices that because we did not change some settings, they will be left out.

Now, we can save the answer file and name it as we want to. But the file extension must always be .xml. Save the answer file to root of any drive other than C:.

After that you can delete the install.wim and catalog files from the desktop.

Because the install.wim file that we have used is not belonging to the version of Windows we will Sysprep, the answer file must be edited. So, open it in Notepad.

Change the path to your Windows 10 install.wim file at the bottom of the answer file. In our case we need to change drive and Windows version to Windows 10 Pro. Now, save this file as CustomImage.xml on the drive D:.

Step 8 – Run Sysprep

Finally let’s run sysprep. Open up Command Prompt as admin.

Go to Sysprep folder and type in the following command:

Sysprep.exe /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:D:\CustomImage.xml

In our case the answer file is on the root of the drive D:. Change the command according to where your answer file is located.

The system will now shutdown and is ready to be imaged using your choice of imaging software.

When the computer has booted to imaging and recovery tool, create a system image according to instructions for the program you are using. Once it is done, shutdown the computer.

You have created a generalized, highly customized Windows install image which can be restored to any computer instead of installing. Restoring takes only half of the time needed for installation.

Start PC normally to finalize the installation.

The Welcome phase first boot is a bit different in a Sysprepped Windows. You will be asked to enter the product key. This is of course not necessary, you can skip it.

Now, create a local account. You can later change it to a Microsoft Account.

Finally, we did it. After installation you will see that all customizations are there, all software you installed in Audit Mode are there as well.

That’s all. If you have any questions, you are free to leave them in the comments section below.

The post Sysprep Windows 10 Machine: Step by Step Guide appeared first on TheITBros.

Hello guys! In this article we are going to show you how to fix Windows 10 issue if for some reason you have no sound. If you click on the sound icon, check the slider, make sure your sound is up and make sure that the speakers are not muted. Everything looks fine, but there is just no sound coming from your PC or laptop. There is a problem and we will help you to fix it.

The first thing you need to do is get to Device Manager, because we are going to uninstall the sound card drivers. So, go to Device Manager by clicking on the Start button and select Properties.

Now, you see the Device Manager window. You should look down and select Sound, video and game controllers.

In our case, there is two controllers in there. And they look alright, there are no warning signs. If we just quickly check the properties, we will see that devices are working properly.

Read also: No Sound in Windows 8 Creative Soundcard

But, we have no sound, so we just need to uninstall those controllers. Just right click on them and click Uninstall.

Once it is done, just reboot your system. When it comes back to life, it will reinstall your sound hardware, hopefully with the correct drivers. And that may solve your problem.

But if you do that and you’ve still got no sound, there is another solution. We need to check some other settings. Just right click on your volume icon and go to Playback Devices. We are looking for speakers settings here. Select your speaker and then go to Properties. Now we need to go to the Enhancements tab and just make sure there is a tick in Disable all enhancements. Apply the settings and try to test it out.

If you’ve still got no sound, go to the next tab (Advanced) and look at default sample rate. We can change it from 16 bit to something else (24 bit for example). Apply it and test your sound.

Read also: How to block your USB Port

This should help you. If not, then we need to just go to the Configure. Depending on your hardware you might have something different here. All you need is select your audio channel and click on Next. Now, put a tick on the Front left and right option and go ahead.

After that, click on Finish and test your sound.

Hopefully, you’ve got your sound back now. If not, feel free to leave your question in the comments section below.

The post How to fix sound problems on Windows 10 appeared first on TheITBros.

Hello guys! In this article we will show you how to fix internet connection problems in Windows 10. The problem is sometimes you will have a yellow triangle (no internet access) as your network icon. It’s just showing you that there is no connection or the connection is unidentified. The fix is so simple, you just have to reset winsock catalog to default settings. You need to run two commands in CMD as administrator, and then restart your PC. So, let’s start.

Go to the Start menu and type in CMD. Right click on it and run CMD as administrator. This is a command prompt, which we have opened as administrator. We have an internet issue, so the first thing we need to do is reset winsock catalog by typing:

 netsh winsock reset catalog

Hit Enter and it will show you a message like “Successfully reset the Winsock Catalog”. Also, it says that you must restart the computer, but we are not going to do this right now.

We just need to run another command to reset TCP/IP stack. Just type in:

 netsh int ip reset reset.log

and then hit Enter.

It says that resetting is failed and access is denied. You don’t have to worry about, it’s normal.

Now you just need to restart your PC and after that you will see that everything is OK. That’s it. If you have any questions, free to leave them in the comments section below.

The post How to fix Internet connection problem for Windows 10 users appeared first on TheITBros.