Visual Studio 2015 Breaks New Logins


Update: I can confirm that this issue is fixed in Visual Studio with Update 1.

I recently ran into an issue where after pushing out new Visual Studio 2015 installs (with SCCM), new users could not log into those machines. When trying to log in with a new user, the following error occurs: “The User Profile Service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded.”

When looking at the Event Logs, I saw access denied errors related to failing to copy some files to the users new profile from C:\Users\Default. (This hidden default profile is what all new user profiles are based from.)

SCVMM 1801 Upgrade Fails


When going through the upgrade process, I got a failure when install the upgraded Management Server.

After digging through the setup logs (C:\ProgramData\VMMLogs), I found this in the SetupWizard log file: Violation of PRIMARY KEY constraint ‘PK_tbl_NetMan_PortClassification’. Cannot insert duplicate key in object ‘dbo.tbl_NetMan_PortClassification’. The duplicate key value is ().

SCSM: Notification workflow on Work Item assignments


Update: I have written an additional blog entry on this topic to address both Service Requests and Release Records. This post can be found here: Notification workflow on Work Item assignments (Part 2)

The Microsoft Service Manager team has written two great blogs on how to create the workflows required in Service Manager to send out notifications when a work item has been assigned/re-assigned. Initially you might think this could be done in the UI, but actually it must be done in XML. The Service Manager team has provided great examples on how to do this for both Incidents and Activities.

The blog for Incidents can be found here:

The blog for Activities can be found here:

I followed the blogs above and got it working in no time for both my Incidents and Activities. However, I also wanted to do this for my Problems and Change Requests.

Notification workflow on Work Item assignments (Part 2)


This is a follow-up post to my original post on this topic: SCSM: Notification workflow on Work Item assignments.

With the release of Service Manager 2012 there are now two new work item types, Service Requests and Release Records. It is also possible to create notifications for assignments of these new work item types. This is done just like it was done in the original post using the same concepts.

I have attached two new working management pack examples. One more Service Request and one for Release Records. Just like the previous packs, you will need to update the notification template GUID to get them to work. Also, the Service Request example that is attached works similar to the Incident example is my previous post (it also notifies the Affected User that their ticket was assigned).

Change this GUID

Service Manager 2012 SP1 CU2 Install Error


I ran into an issue when attempting to install CU2 for Service Manager 2012 SP1. I wanted to share the error and solution in case anyone else came across the problem. In my scenario, I was able to successfully update all Console, my Data Warehouse Management Server, and my Self-Service Portal servers, without issue. However, on my Primary Management server the update failed and provided the following error:

An error occurred while executing custom action: “_Installhealthserviceperfcountersforpatching”

SCSM: Include Affected/Assigned To User of Parent Work Item in Notifications


If you have ever wanted to include data properties from parent work items in your Service Manager activity notifications, you may have come across this blog: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/servicemanager/2012/04/03/using-data-properties-from-the-parent-work-items-in-activity-email-templates/.

This information is great as long as you want to include properties from the Work Item class. However, if you want to include the Affected User or Assigned To User in these e-mails, this gets more complicated as this cannot be generated using the UI.

OSD: Access content directly from DP in TS problem


I ran into a problem after migrating my task sequences from Configuration Manager 2007 to 2012. I found that I could not easily set my task sequence deployments to use the setting “Access content directly from a distribution point when needed by the running task sequence.” By default it was setting itself to “Download content locally when needed by running task sequence.”

Install Application Step fails in Task Sequence


We recently ran into a problem where we were getting failures in our OSD Task Sequences trying to use the Install Applications step using System Center Configuration manager 2012 R2. When the Task Sequence hits the Install Application step it would fail with the error 0x80004005. After some troubleshooting were able to isolate the cause of the problem and find a workaround.