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  • 4 min read

ThinkShield Secure Wipe

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Overview

ThinkShield secure wipe is the successor to the ThinkPad Drive Erase Utility and is designed to provide the wipe out function of the SSD.

Note

For more detailed information about ThinkShield Secure Wipe, please see the ThinkShield Secure Wipe Technical Whitepaper

Although the Drive Erase Utility is still supported and provided as an external tool, ThinkShield secure wipe is fully integrated in the BIOS image and does not require any external tools.

Secure wipe can be executed locally by BIOS from the application menu of the Startup Boot Menu invoked by F12 or remotely from OS through the WMI interface, which is what this post will be covering.

  • 7 min read

Collecting and Storing Lenovo Warranty
Information to Azure Monitor

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A feature add (by popular demand) in Commercial Vantage is the ability to write the device's warranty information to WMI.

The Lenovo_WarrantyInformation WMI class located under the root\Lenovo Namespace is created when the Write Warranty Information to WMI policy has been enabled on the device.

In this post, we're going to walk through how this data can be collected from Intune managed devices and ingested into a Log Analytics Workspace in Azure Monitor.

  • 3 min read

Introducing Lenovo Odometer

Odometer

In some previous articles we have highlighted how you can collect Lenovo Updates History from a new WMI class in the root\Lenovo namespace. See https://thinkdeploy.blogspot.com/2018/10/tracking-thininstaller-update-history.html

We are now adding a new class under this namespace for the new "Odometer" feature found in the latest ThinkPads that were recently launched. This feature keeps track of several metrics that can provide an indication of how a system has been used. The metrics collected are:

  • 5 min read

Deploying Commercial Vantage with Intune

For those who are migrating from Configuration Manager to Intune, you may find the need to deploy Commercial Vantage to your devices from Intune. Commercial Vantage consists of a UWP app plus other services and components. An enterprise package with deployment guide and ADMX templates is available to assist deploying this solution. Download the latest version of Commercial Vantage with Deployment Guide here.

  • 11 min read

Hardware Support Apps without Microsoft Store

With versions of Windows 10 since 1809, Microsoft has introduced the concept of Modern Drivers. These new drivers have a few requirements:

  • Declarative: The driver must be INF installable with no co-installers
  • Componentized: The driver must support the architecture of having a base driver with optional extension drivers for customizations above the base functionality
  • Hardware Support Apps: Any software required for working with the device must be in the form of a UWP app available from the Microsoft Store and will be associated to this driver in the INF.
  • 4 min read

Lenovo Model Information in MDT

When using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT), the ZTIGather.wsf script will pull important information MDT needs and place it into variables for usage during a task sequence. The %Model% variable is a key piece of information during task sequences especially for targeting software and drivers.