Bits that don't work in 10

[CyberNerd]

I've had 3 staff/students come in with their bricked home laptops after bodged update to W10.

Seen a couple working so it's not all bad.

[Sheridan]

Just had a thought, what version of 10 are you guys testing? I'm having very limited success with Enterprise when joined to a domain, maybe I should try Education but I want full group policy management.

[GuyJD]

Has anyone else had the problem that DVD drives keep coming up with an error in device manager and you have to uninstall it and re-scan for it to get it working again?

 

It also goes back to having an error after a reboot of the machine and you have to do the same fix again.

[internetuser]

Just had a thought, what version of 10 are you guys testing? I'm having very limited success with Enterprise when joined to a domain, maybe I should try Education but I want full group policy management.

 

Why would windows 10 education not give you full group policy management ?

[Arthur]

I'm having very limited success with Enterprise when joined to a domain, maybe I should try Education but I want full group policy management.

Education is going to be exactly the same as Enterprise in terms of GPO management.

[internetuser]

I have education here on the domain and its working as expected so far. Apart from the Windows 10 quirks

[Michael]

Pro, Education and Enterprise are exactly the same in the context of GPO management.

 

Pro just has fractionally less features than Education and Enterprise, but my recommendation (as the name suggests) would be to use the Education version.

 

In terms of reliability, I've had few issues with Windows 10, but my instinct tells me the stability and performance issues some users are experiencing are most likely driver related, rather than a core issue at the heart of the OS. Inevitably the older Windows 10 becomes, the more reliable and improved drivers will arrive in good time.

[Sheridan]

To be honest, I can't get my test install of W10 (on a surface pro) to apply user GPO's anyway - its ignoring Folder redirection, start menu settings, drive mappings, desktop background and desktop redirection.

 

I've tried Education and Enterprise and both are the same - so either its the surface pro or something odd is going on with this.

[Mustang]

I agree with the statements above Education and Enterprise will have the same gpo settings

 

What have you tried so far to troubleshoot your issues??

[Sheridan]

Everything I can think of so far has not resulted in a working install.

 

Fresh image - minimal policies applied and I can get a non admin user logged in. With a missing desktop (even though this is copied locally) and a Start Menu that is missing most of the deployed tiles. The Camera app disappears at will. Sometimes the start button simply does nothing at all. The desktop tends to stay black until you click the taskbar, then it corrects itself until the next login.

 

No three logins in a row produce the same results, for the same user on the same machine. Checking the logs for GPO errors shows normal messages about what GPO's are applied.

 

The only error I can find relating to logins are about Cortana crashing every so often, and the odd message about not being able to read the Default Domain Policy (which is pretty much empty anyway) even though the path is fully accessible.

 

If I remove any of the provisioned apps then I've pretty much killed the installation - removing the crap seems to break 10 (enterprise and education) as the next login results in no policies being applied, yet the event log reads almost as if there are no policies to actually be applied!

 

We were intending to put out new notebooks with W10 but I think they're going to be Chromebooks now.

[Michael]

As discussed earlier, redirecting the Start Menu in Windows 10 does not work reliably. Only certain tiles appear and others do not.

 

This looks like a bug to me - has anyone managed to get it working consistently? Thanks!

[Sheridan]

I didn't have much luck with StartMenu redirection in Windows 8.1 either

 

I'm done with 10 for now - the fact you can break the OS by removing the cruddy built in Apps is worrying. This is Microsoft's IOS, i.e one administrative user per device otherwise its a non starter.

 

Maybe in 6 months time it will be better but with the track record of 8 and 8.1 I think MS are genuinely moving out of the Corporate/Business/Education area.

[internetuser]

I use the below code to remove the build in apps I do not want

 

 

 

$AppsList = "Microsoft.BingFinance","Microsoft.BingNews","Microsoft.BingWeather","Microsoft.XboxApp","Microsoft.SkypeApp","Microsoft.MicrosoftSolitaireCollection","Microsoft.BingSports","Microsoft.ZuneMusic","Microsoft.ZuneVideo","Microsoft.Windows.Photos","Microsoft.People","Microsoft.MicrosoftOfficeHub","Microsoft.WindowsMaps","microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps","Microsoft.Getstarted","Microsoft.3DBuilder"

 

ForEach ($App in $AppsList)

{

$PackageFullName = (Get-AppxPackage $App).PackageFullName

$ProPackageFullName = (Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -online | where {$_.Displayname -eq $App}).PackageName

write-host $PackageFullName

Write-Host $ProPackageFullName

if ($PackageFullName)

{

Write-Host "Removing Package: $App"

remove-AppxPackage -package $PackageFullName

}

else

{

Write-Host "Unable to find package: $App"

}

if ($ProPackageFullName)

{

Write-Host "Removing Provisioned Package: $ProPackageFullName"

Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -online -packagename $ProPackageFullName

}

else

{

Write-Host "Unable to find provisioned package: $App"

}

 

}

[Sheridan]

I've used something similar which works fine. However after that I find the start menu doesn't work. And in the case of a Surface Pro the camera app disappears for all users despite not having been removed - I'm guessing the camera app in embedded in some of the other tosh they force onto you!

 

Problem is, once removed there's no way to reinstall the provisioned apps - so its another reinstall.

[internetuser]

You can reinstall them with be below code.

 

$Appx = Get-AppxPackage | select name

$appx | Out-File -FilePath C:\temp\Appx.txt

[Sheridan]

That code lists the apps, but I can't get add-appxprovisionedpackage to reinstall using just the names. I think it needs to full path which is hidden in Program Files\WindowsApps I believe?

[internetuser]

below is the article I used.

 

Removing built-in Apps from Windows 10 using Powershell - CCMEXEC.COM – System Center blog

[Sheridan]

Works well - but reinstalling doesn't seem possible once removed. I've had to reinstall the OS just to get the camera working again - even though it worked for me as an admin it disappeared for all other users after I removed GetOffice,Solitaire,Money,News,OneNote,People,Phone and Sport!

[Mustang]

Everything I can think of so far has not resulted in a working install.

 

Fresh image - minimal policies applied and I can get a non admin user logged in. With a missing desktop (even though this is copied locally) and a Start Menu that is missing most of the deployed tiles. The Camera app disappears at will. Sometimes the start button simply does nothing at all. The desktop tends to stay black until you click the taskbar, then it corrects itself until the next login.

 

No three logins in a row produce the same results, for the same user on the same machine. Checking the logs for GPO errors shows normal messages about what GPO's are applied.

 

The only error I can find relating to logins are about Cortana crashing every so often, and the odd message about not being able to read the Default Domain Policy (which is pretty much empty anyway) even though the path is fully accessible.

 

If I remove any of the provisioned apps then I've pretty much killed the installation - removing the crap seems to break 10 (enterprise and education) as the next login results in no policies being applied, yet the event log reads almost as if there are no policies to actually be applied!

 

We were intending to put out new notebooks with W10 but I think they're going to be Chromebooks now.

 

Sounds a bit like your trying too many things at once, we need to take things back to basics.

 

Forget removing any of the provisioned apps for now.

 

Do any other machines have trouble with your default domain policy? if so i would fix this first, Microsoft's best practice is to never modify this policy.

 

For the fresh install I would

• Create 2 new OU's at the root of your domain, place the computer in 1 and a new user in the other, apply no group polices to these OU's.(if you have lots of group polices at the root of your domain you can just block inheritance)
  
• Now can you logon/logoff and make sure everything works as expected?? and then repeat this?
  
• If yes to above, create a new group policy for the user or the computer settings but not both and link it to the relevant OU. Enable some basic settings in the group policy, reboot the computer and test.
  
• Now can you logon/logoff and make sure everything still works as expected and the group policy are settings applied?? and then repeat this?
  

[Sheridan]

Thats along the lines of what I've already tried. Removing apps is an inbuilt kill switch, remove them and your W10 is bust!

 

The problems are linked exclusively to the W10 test machines - all other W7 machines are pulling GPOs down nicely.

 

I've had to abandon 10 for the time being, wasted far too much time on what is worse than a beta test as far as I can see!

[Michael]

I don't really see the point in removing Apps personally - it's easy enough to hide the All Apps menu on Start, but I'm still struggling with redirecting the Start Menu using an XML.

 

Has anyone on Edugeek found a solution to this? And if not, what are others doing about controlling Windows 10 Start?

[Sheridan]

The start tiles group policies just don't work in 10, and to be honest I've never got the, working in 8 either. Before I put 10 aside I just dumped icons on the desktop and ignored the tiles as you never got the same set twice!

[Trapper]

For Windows Update have you tried setting the proxy via netsh set http proxy? This worked on Win 8/.1 to allow Metro (sorry the IFKAM) apps to connect via a proxy when they would not when it was only set in IE.

[cybergoldfish]

I don't really see the point in removing Apps personally - it's easy enough to hide the All Apps menu on Start, but I'm still struggling with redirecting the Start Menu using an XML.

 

Has anyone on Edugeek found a solution to this? And if not, what are others doing about controlling Windows 10 Start?

We've got an XML start layout working using a Computer GPO instead of a User GPO. The user GPO was being really inconsistent, but the computer GPO seems to work much more reliably. This does mean all users end up having the same start layout though, but it's better than not having one!

[Michael]

We've got an XML start layout working using a Computer GPO instead of a User GPO. The user GPO was being really inconsistent, but the computer GPO seems to work much more reliably. This does mean all users end up having the same start layout though, but it's better than not having one!

 

That's interesting. Will investigate tomorrow