Test your SCCM application deployment using PsExec

When getting an application ready for deployment it is typically much faster to test that the install works as expected by running it as SYSTEM. When an application is ran from Software Center it is ran under the SYTEM context. Manually running the install as SYSTEM means you do not need to wait for your content to refresh or for your policies to refresh. This allows you to test and debug much quicker.

Instructions

  • Download and extract the PSTools suite from Windows Sysinternals
  • Open CMD or PowerShell as an admin
  • Navigate to the location where you extracted PSTools
  • Run the following command:
psexec -s -i cmd

-s means run under the SYSTEM context
-i means run interactively
cmd is what program to run as SYSTEM

  • You will see a new CMD prompt open up, type in whoami to verify you are under the SYSTEM context
  • Navigate to where your install is and test running it as SYSTEM
Running PsExec from Command Prompt
Verifying that you are running as SYSTEM
Running PsExec from PowerShell
Verifying that you are running as SYSTEM

If all goes well you can add your application to SCCM with the confidence that it will work as expected.

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