Office 2013 Security in Windows 8.1

[KSPAdmins]

Hi,

 

Our new Headteacher has asked for the PC on his desk to run Windows 8.1 'out-of-the-box', despite us running a stable and well tested Windows 7 across the board. We have given him Office 2013 (same as on the Windows 7 PCs) but it seems normal rules don't apply in Windows 8.1 - we have pretty much had to remove every security (Trust Centre) setting known to man to get Office documents to open from Outlook attachments without corruption messages, and to open files from older versions of Office on this one PC.

 

We are aware of certain stability issues in Office 2013, but we think we have pinned most of them down to running Smart Notebook 11 (don't get me started on that one...), but the Head's PC isn't running any Smart software, and the Windows 7 PCs have no Trust Centre settings turned off at all.

 

Could it be Group Policy settings made for Windows 7 interfering with Windows 8.1? I'm no expert in this field but I can't think of anything else, and the frustration is starting to set in!

 

Any suggestions woud be much appreciated.

 

Daryl

[3s-gtech]

We've found Office 2013 runs equally between the two, with the same GPs set on both OSs. Is it fully patched? Office 2013 was (and still can be) an unstable pig of a thing, we've just found that some recent updates fixed our hyperlink bug.

[KSPAdmins]

Yes, it was fully patched, but we actually reinstalled it thinking something had gone wrong with the installation, so it's now patched up to the same point the fully working Windows 7 copies are. If there was ever a point where we could actuallly get at the machine to repatch it (the Head works far longer hours than we do, it seems), we'd try, but I still don't think it would work as it didn't work before.

 

On the subject of Office 2013 bugs though, we've had to get the staff to disable COM Addins and hardware acceleration to make Excel in particular more stable, and that's with the latest updates on selected PCs. My Network Manager is reluctant to send out all the Office patches via WSUS as there are so many it's likely to kill the system. On reflection though, it may be a project for October half-term, whether we like it or not...

[3s-gtech]

They do improve it greatly, but you're right about network load. I approved some August updates this week - not a huge number - totalled 900MB in WU and ground one zone of our wifi network to a halt when a suite of laptops connected. Woops. I may try the COM addins - we have Excel stability issues too. It'll come though - Office 2010 was greatly improved by SP1 and 2.

[robjduk]

office 2013 service pack 1 is out.... that's installed right?

[KSPAdmins]

SP1 is installed, yes. The two of us only just got Office 2013 installed across 500 PCs over the summer 'holiday' (manually, we're not very sophisticated), and we really only had time to install it up to SP1 (with a few exceptions which we've since taken further).

 

Stability issues aside, it's the whole security thing that puzzles us - the Windows 7 (tested to destruction) installations require no tinkering, while the single Windows 8.1 (flung on at the last minute) PC we have needs all the Office Trust Centre file protection switching off for it to function properly, even opening older versions of Office documents. Almost daily the Head is finding something else it won't do - of all the people in an organisation to have as a guinea pig, the big boss is rarely your best candidate...

[jamesfed]

On the whole thing of SmartNotebook 11 we had issues with the plugins crashing out Word now and again, also the SmartInk tool put a mahoosive white box at the top of the page on some IE sessions.

 

Either way as others have said disabling the addins (and in my case just forgetting about SmartInk) seem to help. Otherwise Office 2013 is as smooth as it gets

[KSPAdmins]

Well, I'm biting the bullet later on today and throwing every single update available at Office 2013 on the PC in question. Its latest niggle is that it won't let the user save an old version of an Excel file in the new format. I've followed every suggestion the software has put forward with regard to file blocking for curing this, and it still doesn't work. It's getting a bit embarrassing, to be honest...

[KSPAdmins]

75 minutes and 1.8GB of updates later, plus a roaming profile reset, and things have gone very quiet. I'm hoping this is a good sign.

 

I'm now setting up a laptop with a clean install of Windows 8.1 to play with it properly...

[SYNACK]

Sounds like you have had a bad time of it, I have to mirror the above comments and say that it runs the same for up on out older 7 builds and our current 8.1 builds. Hope the patches have resolved it.

[KSPAdmins]

Sadly not. He must have been busy elsewhere yesterday - just had an email telling me all the gremlins are back. Attachments won't open from Outlook (Office thinks they're corrupt) and some of the Add-ons are playing up. Guess I'm going to have to remove Office's file protection settings again, leaving the PC open to attack. Splendid.

[sted]

does he ever log into windows 7 pcs with the same username if so you may want to add the reg key to the windows 8.1 pc that makes it create v4 profiles rather than sharing a profile between 7 and 8.1 Incompatibility between Windows 8.1 roaming user profiles and those in earlier versions of Windows

[KSPAdmins]

Interesting article, thank you.

 

He only logs on to his Windows 8.1 PC - a new profile would have been created Monday night or yesterday morning, after all the updates went on. However, it's a Profile.V2 folder that's been created. The registry entry mentioned in the article doesn't exist on the PC in question, so do you think it would be worth adding it and redoing his profile again?

 

-- Edit --

 

He does log on to W7 - we think he uses the laptop we have in the school hall to do assemblies. Might even have done so yesterday morning. Definitely going to try the Profile.V4 thing now.

Edited September 24, 2014 by KSPAdmins

[KSPAdmins]

V4 profile didn't work. Exactly the same problem - no Office document attachment from an external source (we've pinned it down to that) will open without Protected Views turned OFF, giving a "file corrupted" message each time. So much for enhanced security...