In many situations, this solution is a little overkill though, so I’ve also created a second version which simply allows you to redirect any local folder (including variable paths!) to any location in a user’s Onedrive folder.
It can be used as a onetimer or as logonscript, and it can also be used to migrate existing content or create hard links for specific local appdata folders.
The main differences between Microsoft AAD LAPS and LeanLAPS:
MS Won’t enable the account if it’s disabled.
MS Won’t create the account if it doesn’t exist.
MS Won’t add it to Administrators group if it’s not a member.
MS Won’t remove accounts from Administrators group if they’re not supposed to be there.
MS has an AAD integrated GUI and RBAC
LeanLAPS requires P2 licensing because it used Proactive Remediations
LeanLAPS
Managing local admin accounts using Intune has a lot of quirks, my tele-colleague Rudy Ooms has already written extensively about this. He also wrote a PowerShell solution to rotate a specific local admin’s password and had the genius idea of using Proactive Remediations (a MEM feature) to display passwords to admins, integrated / free in the Intune Console.
However, I felt I needed a more lightweight solution that;
3. Download and doublecheck the config of LeanLAPS.ps1 (e.g. configure if other local admins should be removed, what the local admin name should be and the password length). Make sure to use NotePad++ / that the file stays UTF-8 Encoded without a BOM.
4. Set both the detection and remediation script to LeanLAPS.ps1 and run it in 64 bit:
5. Assign to a group and deploy. By default it will run every day, but you can also let it run more or less frequently, which determines how often the password is reset (hourly in below example):
6. Deploy, and then click on the script package:
7. Go to Device status and add both output columns:
Congratulations, you can now see the current local admin passwords for all managed Windows 10 devices!
Note: if you wish to trigger a quick remediation, delete the correct keys under Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\IntuneManagementExtension\SideCarPolicies\Scripts\Execution and Reports in the client’s registry, then restart the IntuneManagementExtension service and the remediation will re-run within 5 minutes.
8. If you want to display an encrypted password in Intune, generate a public and private key and configure the resulting values in gui.ps1 and leanLAPS.ps1
9. If you don’t want LeanLAPS to remove certain preapproved admins or groups as admin, make sure to configure the $approvedAdmins variable.
RBAC
If you provide e.g. your helpdesk with the correct Intune roles, they will be able to see local admin passwords as reported by above solution:
GUI
The community, in the form of Colton Lacy, also added an optional GUI frontend for LeanLAPS which you could use for e.g. helpdesk staff:
I’ve seen a few examples of distributing a set of teams backgrounds to users in MEM, mostly they seemed a little overly complex, especially in targetting all local users and/or packaging the script into an application. I wanted to:
Deploy using MEM PS script in user context
Avoid access controls on the storage location of the backgrounds
Simplify the creation of required Azure resources
Have a simple update procedure
Here’s my take, first autocreate a blob storage location using my template:
Normally I’d recommend using the Unified Write Filter in Windows 10 to keep Kiosk machines in a semi-decent state.
For a customer that did not have this luxury, I wrote a tiny self-scheduling PowerShell script that will run as SYSTEM and clean up any of the specified folders in any of the user profiles on the machine.
This example can be used for many purposes to drop a script and maintain a scheduled task. Redeploying it will overwrite the dropped script and scheduled task as per the new config.
