Michael Niehaus is one of those experts who accompany you throughout your entire professional life, even though you normally never get to know them personally. For many years, Michael was one of the most active employees at Microsoft in the field of Windows deployment. Anyone who has ever worked with BDD, MDT, SCCM, or similar technologies will know his name.
At the end of 2023, Michael Niehaus left the “mothership” for 2Pint (https://2pintsoftware.com/). At the same time, he started his personal blog, the “out of office hours” (https://oofhours.com/), which reached an impressive 5 million readers this summer.
This episode is pure nostalgia. I took the opportunity to record this conversation during the PSConfEU 2025 in Malmö. As so often, we look back on 20, 30 years of IT, on personal and professional matters, and above all on all the trials and tribulations that have kept us going to this day. From WDS to WSUS, from PXE boot to Autopilot.
The interview was recorded on June 26, 2024 in Malmö (Sweden).
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Show notes
- Michael Niehaus on LinkedIn
- Michael Niehaus blog: oofhours.com
- 2Pint software welcomes Michael Niehaus
- Building a cross-platform OS deployment solution with PowerShell – Michael Niehaus – PSConfEU 2025 (YouTube)
- Migrating to PowerShell 7 for IT pros – Michael Niehaus – PSConfEU 2025 (YouTube)
- Michael Niehaus at the PowerShell Conference 2025 Aftermovie (YouTube)
- Cincinnati: A city of (German) Immigrants: http://www.cincinnati-cityofimmigrants.com/german/
- Manframe Computer (WP)
- What is System Management Server (SMS) – Complete Overview (Geeks for Geegs)
- SCCM: (System Center) Configuration Manager (WP)
- BDD: Solution Accelerator: Microsoft Deployment 1.0 – What’s New? (jorgep.com, January 2008)
- MDT: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (WP)
- KiXtart (WP)
- There’s VBA, Then There’s VBS. (The Coding Theory)
- ActiveX (WP)
- ActiveX and the Component Object Model (ni.com)
- Tabs or Spaces (alexkondov.com)
- The Tabs vs. Spaces war is over, and spaces have emerged victorious (Reddit)
- OSD feature pack: Deploy Windows Vista with OSD Feature Pack for Microsoft SMS 2003 SP2, December 2006 (4sysops.com)
- Bill Gates trustorthy computing campaign in 2002 (wired.com)
- Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation (WP)
- Metaprogramming (WP)
- Microsoft Graph PowerShell (Github)
- A Friendly Graph PowerShell Survival Guide – Aleksandar Nikolić – PSConfEU 2025 (YouTube)
- Windows PE (WP)
- Windows Imaging Format (WP)
- Capture and apply a Windows imgage using a single .WIM file (Microsoft Learn)
- Wess Miller (Directions on Microsoft) (LinkedIn)
- Directions on Microsoft (directionsonmicrosoft.com)
- Answer files: unattend.xml (Microsoft Learn)
- Generate autounattend.xml files for Windows 10/11 (schneegans.de)
- YAML JSON and XML A Practical Guide to Choosing the Right Format (celerdata.com)
- Windows Deployment Services (WP)
- Remote Installation Services (WP)
- TFTP: Trivial File Transfer Protocol (WP)
- ipxe.org
- Michael Niehaus: Update inbox scripts (PowerShell Gallery)
- StifleR from 2pintsoftware
- DeployR from 2pintsoftware
- Starting MSIX and AppX Applications with PowerShell from the command line (andreasnick.com)
- Microsoft Surface (WP)
- Microsoft Artifact Registry (Github)
Chapters
00:00:00.000 Hope (Intro music)
00:00:52.812 Michael’s German roots
00:03:15.413 Career steps
00:05:59.060 Systems Management
00:09:11.872 A bunch of tools
00:10:32.305 Powershell vs VBScript
00:15:41.374 ConfigManager
00:18:26.679 MDT
00:21:50.690 Accidential success
00:29:40.519 Vista: A giant leap
00:37:45.066 WDS
00:43:53.700 WSUS
00:46:22.749 A new job
00:56:33.814 Life after Microsoft
01:01:02.461 (Update) Inbox apps
01:14:56.484 Outro music
Music