WMI Filters for Windows Operating Systems

For those of you wanting to filter your GPO's by OS here are the filters we use. The filter works against the root\CIMV2 namespace


Windows 8

Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem Where Version like "6.2%" and ProductType = "1"


Windows 7

Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem Where Version like "6.1%" and ProductType = "1"

Windows XP

Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem Where Version like "5.1%" and ProductType = "1"

Dell Optiplex 390 fails to apply GPO settings

At work we have been deploying Dell Optiplex 390’s with XP using an MDT task sequence, the build works perfectly however once the machine attempts to apply group policy we have failures, this causes the machine to fail to install allocated msi packages. Obviously not a great situation to be in.
Following some research I have found that the issue appears to occur mostly in situations where a client is using a Gig speed network card and where network connections are teamed. The issue appears to be caused by the network card switching between speeds and full/half duplex to find the mode it can operate at. By adding a registry key we can prevent this checking from happening which will provide a more stable connection during the all important startup process.
This solution has been tested to work in our environment, obviously your mileage may vary and if you choose to make this change you do so at your own risk, playing with the networking settings in Windows may break more than it fixes however in our testing this has been an easy and successful workaround.

The key details are as follows
Key Location : HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters
Key Name : DisableDHCPMediaSense
Key Type : Reg_Dword
Key Value : 00000001

These settings can either be added using a reg entry or a command line as follows

reg add HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters /v DisableDHCPMediaSense /t REG_Dword /d 00000001

In our case we have added a command line near the end of our task sequence which we have filtered using WMI in a way similar to the one we used in a previous post. In this case the WMI filter we used is as follows

Select * from Win32_ComputerSystemProduct WHERE Name LIKE "%Optiplex 390%"

Again we are running this against the root\cimv2 namespace. This query could be repeated in the task sequence options filtering for additional hardware which exhibits this particular issue, thereby allowing you to keep a smaller number of task sequences in your deployment share.

Update : 29-06-2012

We have begun rolling out Samsung N200 laptops, these also exhibit the issue with needing DHCPMediaSense to be set, for ease of use here is the WMI code needed

Select * from Win32_ComputerSystemProduct WHERE Name LIKE "300V3A/300V4A/300V5A/200A4B/200A5B"

Reference:

Technet User Discussion

Serverfault Question

WMI Filters for different Windows versions

In order to run multiple operating systems in the same OU structure  and have relevant GPO's applied we can make use of WMI filters. These filters can be used to interrogate the operating system and either apply or not based on the result.

I will not go into how to create a WMI filter here as if you are here looking at this then you only really want the query needed to create the filter.

The basic filter will take the following format

Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem Where Version like “x” and ProductType = “y" 

OS Version

The relevant  OS version values are as follows, these can be substituted in place of x:

Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2 = “6.1%”
Windows Vista or Server 2008 = “6.0%”
Windows XP = “5.2%”
Windows 2000 = “5.0%”

Product Type

 To filter by roles the computer may perform, change the ProductType (y) to:

Client = “1”
Server running a Domain Controller role = “2”
Member server (server that’s not a DC) = “3”