Tag Archives: OSD

Provisioning mode is the state your SCCM client is in when deploying an OS via the task sequence. The client is installed in “provisioning mode” to prevent it from processing new policy requests until the task sequence is completed.

You can find its state in the registry;

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\CCM\CcmExec\ProvisioningMode = True
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\CCM\CcmExec\SystemTaskExclude = SchedulerStartup;SchedulerShutdown;SchedulerLogon;SchedulerLogoff;ClientRegistrationStartup

On a healthy machine that has finished a task sequence the ccmeval task changes these values when run succesfully. these registry values should be:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\CCM\CcmExec\ProvisioningMode = False
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\CCM\CcmExec\SystemTaskExclude = (no value, should be blank)

In one situation (a year ago) I found out provisioning mode was not working correctly. Possibly caused by a bug because of an issue with mobileclient.tcf. This should be fixed in SCCM 2012 SP1 but we haven’t removed te fix for new deployments from our task sequence, just to be sure.

The year 2012 is the number in this experimenting afternoon. The new products (for me at least) all have the 2012 in their name/version.

During starting with a Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012 SP1 Test Lab, I also got acquainted with Windows Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012.

When you have used Windows 8 before it’s really not that different from Windows 7 as you might think. The biggest tip is to use the StartButton and start typing where you’re looking for just like you would when not browsing the Win7 startmenu folders.

To discover what programs are available after logging in to any Windows 8 of Server 2012 I’ve found an easy way for myself. This is really due to the missing start-menu you were used to. You can always go to %ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs. This is actually the real location for the Windows start-menu since Windows Vista was released.
Especially Server Manager has become quite nice and I also life the way of thinking with the controlling other “core servers” (without GUI) for the future when more servers could be needed to separate roles.