Hope that I can share more of my scripts, findings and solutions instead of keeping them as a “company secret”.

No more secrets!

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.

Thoughtful quote by Stewart Brand at the first Hackers’ Conference back in 1984

Free to use, so give it a try.

You can find it at: http://snowland.se/demo/

snowland.osdx

Why I did it…
1. I wanted to test if I still know how to use a HEX-editor
2. I don’t like the original text.

Do I need to mention: This is NOT supported by anyone and if you break any deployment-solution… don’t blame me.

First, make a backup (*doh*).

The files you are looking for are located on your PXE-point, X:\RemoteInstall\SMSBoot\x86 (and \x64)

I use XVI32 v2.51 www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/freeware/xvi32/xvi32.htm to make the changes in the binary files.

Open up PXEBOOT.COM in XVI and search for “Press F12″ (case sensitive).
Then replace the text. If you have a shorter text, fill it out with blank spaces. If you have a longer text… tough luck. :-\

The original text:

And the changed text:

Save and test to PXE-boot a machine.
(If you can’t see the new text, you probably need to copy the changed file to both the x86 and the x64 directory)

That wasn’t to hard, was it?
If it was… don’t bother to try the WDSNBP.COM-file.

The largest textblock that a user can see is the following text, this is what we want to change / pimp.

The easy way is just to change the text to something else, but why not use some ascii-art?

If you want to use ascii-art, the maximum width is 51 chars (the width of the third line) and 3 lines high since you need to replace and not add/delete anything.
Of course the first and second line can be a bit longer.

So… start up some texteditor with monospace font (notepad will do) and create some ascii-art.

Now that we have some ascii-art with loads of blank spaces we need to replace the right number of spaces with something that we can see.

The number of # should be exactly the same as the original text.

Start up XVI32 and load WDSNBP.COM, search for “The details below”… now comes the boring/tricky part. Replace the original text with your new ascii-art.

I did a small “translation”-file where I have the orignal row and the new row next to each other, like this for the second row.

Now you can see that the text “computer.” sould be replaced to ” |\ | | “. Yes, it will be hard to read and easy to do wrong.

There is a search/replace option in XVI32, if you use it remember: replace with the exact same number of characters.

Save, PXE-boot and enjoy…

The original:

The final result:

The MD5-hash of the WDSNBP.COM and PXEBOOT.COM-files in both x86 and x64 directories is the same so you only have to make the changes in one of them.

Requires a parameter for servername.

inboxcount.vbs

Option Explicit
Const cMinNofFiles = 1

Dim oFso, oArgs
Dim sPartOfPath, sServername, sSiteCode
Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set oArgs = WScript.Arguments

If oArgs.Count < 1 Then
	WScript.echo "ERROR: Missing argument!"
	WScript.Echo ""
	WScript.Echo "cscript.exe inboxCount.vbs SERVERNAME <part of path>"
	WScript.Quit -1
End If
sServername = uCase(oArgs.Item(0))
If oArgs.Count-1 = 1 Then
	sPartOfPath = oArgs.Item(1)
Else
	sPartOfPath = ""
End If

sSiteCode = getSccmSiteCode(sServername)

WScript.Echo "=============================================================================="
WScript.Echo " SCCM Inbox Counter                            Rikard Ronnkvist / snowland.se"
WScript.Echo "------------------------------------------------------------------------------"
WScript.Echo "   Server: " & sServerName
WScript.Echo " SiteCode: " & sSiteCode
WScript.Echo "     Path: \\" & sServername & "\SMS_" & sSiteCode & "\inboxes"
WScript.Echo "------------------------------------------------------------------------------"
ListFolders "\\" & sServername & "\SMS_" & sSiteCode & "\inboxes", "\\" & sServername & "\SMS_" & sSiteCode & "\inboxes"
WScript.Echo "=============================================================================="

WScript.Quit

Function getSccmSiteCode(sServername)
	Dim oWMIService, oLocator, oSites, currentSite

	Set oLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator")
	Set oWMIService = oLocator.ConnectServer(sServername, "root\sms", "", "")

	' Now figure out the site code for this server.
	Set oSites = oWMIService.ExecQuery("SELECT SiteCode FROM SMS_ProviderLocation WHERE ProviderForLocalSite=true")

    For each currentSite in oSites
        getSccmSiteCode = Trim(currentSite.SiteCode)
        Exit Function
    Next
End Function

Sub ListFolders(sPath, sRoot)
	Dim oFolder, oFldr
	Set oFolder = oFSO.GetFolder(sPath)
	If (oFolder.Files.Count >= cMinNofFiles) AND (InStr(oFolder.Path, sPartOfPath) > 0) Then
		wscript.echo Left(oFolder.Files.Count & "        ", 6) & vbTab & Replace(uCase(oFolder.Path), uCase(sRoot), "")
	End If

	For Each oFldr In oFolder.SubFolders
		ListFolders oFldr.Path, sRoot
	Next
End Sub

Forbidden = “Förbjudet” in swedish.

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/Virtualization/casestudy-banverketict.mspx

More info on the product: www.jalasoft.com

I am changing webhost for snowland.se so if you get som 404 or any other error… you know why.

Why the change? I’m collecting all my domains to one host.

Changing to Surftown…

Announcing snowland v2.0
- Change of this site from swedish to english
- New theme
- Some small updates (mainly bug’s)

To-do-list
- Translate the static pages

Might-do-list
- Translate the older posts

Har ni missat någonting så har Techlog-gänget skrivit en samanfattning på www.techlog.nl

En sak som däremot kan vara bra att ha är dessa 3 keynotes:
Bob Muglia
Kirill Tatarinov
Customer and Partner Panel Discussion

Ska jag göra en liten samanfattning så blir det nog: Bra. Inte bäst men bra.