Windows 10 in IT Rooms

[mattpant]

Does anybody have an ultimate guide / best practice guide for how they have got Windows 10 setup and working successfully in the "shared" classroom, e.g. IT Rooms, with high daily volumes with many users logging in and out of the same computers over the course of a day.

 

What sort of profiles have you got set up for your users? Does each user have their own roaming profile? Do they all use the same shared Mandatory profile? how have you set this up? How do you get around all the App's trying to install everytime a user logs into the computer? What are your logon times like?

 

Have you found that you needed to tweak any register settings to get the ultimate user experience, like in previous versions of Windows - ActiveSetup keys etc.

 

I'm finding trying to setup Windows in a school based environment with shared desktops rather then personal devices seems to be becoming increasingly more difficult - they seem to expect that everybody now will be working from their own personal device and that their profiles will be stored on that one device, they logon for the first time, the apps install for that first time logon and that's it for ever more....

 

But of course this doesn't work like that in a school IT Room...

 

So, if anybody has the ultimate classroom setup guide or can share some of their best practices I'd love to read them!

 

Thanks

[timbo343]

This is something i need to work on. At the moment my logins are taking ages to login to win 10, about 2 mins (win 7 is approx 20 seconds with mandatory profiles on first login) need to look into classic shell for the start menu, there is a thread on here about it.

 

We are just looking at deployment options moving from ghost after 12 years to MDT/WDS.

 

Also i need to look at the adm files which i still need to import on toy 2012r2 servers.

 

Will be watching this thread to see what is ocurring.

 

Sorry, this possibly isnt the reply you are looking for.

[mattpant]

Thanks timbo343 - what sort of profiles are you currently using with your users?

 

I find it hard to believe that there appears to be NO tools to support deployment in Education Environments - I had hope when I saw Windows 10 Education, that they finally developed an O/S specially for us, but it was not to be... I've asked the question, what is best practice to setting up Windows 10 in a shared classroom, profiles / etc to a number of Microsoft Employees within the Education team and after months and months of chasing NOBODY can give me an answer as I don't think they have one.

 

Mandatory profiles seem to have vanished of the face of the earth, and don't seem to be supported in Windows 8 / 10 properly - and setting up Default User Profiles use to be fairly straight forward, but now you have to faff about with sysprepping and running unattend scripts to get it sorted.

Edited February 7, 2016 by mattpant

[timbo343]

Thanks timbo343 - what sort of profiles are you currently using with your users?

 

I find it hard to believe that there appears to be NO tools to support deployment in Education Environments - I had hope when I saw Windows 10 Education, that they finally developed an O/S specially for us, but it was not to be... I've asked the question, what is best practice to setting up Windows 10 in a shared classroom, profiles / etc to a number of Microsoft Employees within the Education team and after months and months of chasing NOBODY can give me an answer as I don't think they have one.

 

Mandatory profiles seem to have vanished of the face of the earth, and don't seem to be supported in Windows 8 / 10 properly - and setting up Default User Profiles use to be fairly straight forward, but now you have to faff about with sysprepping and running unattend scripts to get it sorted.

 

At the moment we are using mandatory profiles for years 7 - 9 (we've only just introduced them, thanks to @stgoodyeara for showing me the benefits) and year 10 - 14 are still on local profiles. Staff are on roaming profiles.

 

I need to do some reading on wimdows 10 profiles. I know the "getting things setup for you screen" is a nightmare but need to get round it some how and im sure there is a work around out there.

[robjduk]

I don't have an ultimate setup guide but all I am doing is this...

 

-Windows 10 LTSB with classic shell

-Deployed using MDT 2013 SP1

-Roaming profiles

-20 second login on typical SSD/i3 desktop

 

Working perfectly in lab conditions including physical machines and various test accounts. My advice is to use LTSB or to rip out every app using DISM.

 

As it is so close, I am going to deploy this to two test rooms over half term for live testing but am not anticipating issues.

[timbo343]

I don't have an ultimate setup guide but all I am doing is this...

 

-Windows 10 LTSB with classic shell

-Deployed using MDT 2013 SP1

-Roaming profiles

-20 second login on typical SSD/i3 desktop

 

Working perfectly in lab conditions including physical machines and various test accounts. My advice is to use LTSB or to rip out every app using DISM.

 

As it is so close, I am going to deploy this to two test rooms over half term for live testing but am not anticipating issues.

 

Hmmm, might have to look at enterprise just for the ltsb feature. At least then we are put in control of the updates.

[smithson83]

I didn't have any more luck with the LTSB version, same ~2min login times etc. @robjduk any advise on the roaming profiles side of things, as this may be the key...

[Michael]

Staff use roaming profiles and pupils use a mandatory profile, physically located on each computer (within C:\Users). Login times vary, but the majority are well within 1 minute - excluding the creation of the profile first time for each Staff in turn, which can take a number of minutes.

[robjduk]

Been thinking and the only significant setting linked is the users, system, user profiles, “exclude directories in roaming profile” and remove the following…

 

AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Bibliography;

AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Document Building Blocks;

AppData\Roaming\Serif

 

Obviously tweak to your own settings. I find things like Office download a truck load of templates and bloat the thing out.

[cogrady84]

I don't have an ultimate setup guide but all I am doing is this...

 

-Windows 10 LTSB with classic shell

-Deployed using MDT 2013 SP1

-Roaming profiles

-20 second login on typical SSD/i3 desktop

 

Working perfectly in lab conditions including physical machines and various test accounts. My advice is to use LTSB or to rip out every app using DISM.

 

As it is so close, I am going to deploy this to two test rooms over half term for live testing but am not anticipating issues.

 

I'm also using LTSB with classic shell, sysprepped, captured and deployed with WDS, roaming profiles. No problems other than wondering how I go about managing updates WSUS style? I had heard about windows update for business, but from what I can gather this is only for CB not LTSB... what are you doing to manage updates? I don't want any nasty surprises with a bad "security" update going out sitewide and BSODing everything because I couldnt test it first!

Edited February 8, 2016 by cogrady84

[mattpant]

Thanks all for the feedback so far - how are you finding managing roaming profiles for potentially 1000's of users? How much storage space are you needing for the profiles? - I'd much rather have just the one mandatory profile for all users - but things no longer work correctly in this type of setup to how they worked in previous versions of Windows.

 

The App creation for each new user at logon is a real pain in the backside and slows things down!

Edited February 8, 2016 by mattpant

[DrCheese]

No problems other than wondering how I go about managing updates WSUS style? I had heard about windows update for business, but from what I can gather this is only for CB not LTSB... what are you doing to manage updates?

WSUS still provides Windows 10 & LTSB updates.

[cogrady84]

I'm still in the testing phase of our windows 10 rollout at the moment, so still on windows 7 across the site. however i've never used mandatory profiles, we've been roaming for 10 years or more. My profile store is roughly 50Gb for about 800 users.

[robjduk]

My profile store is about 80GB for about 1700 users but put deduplication on as most the files are the same. Sits around 50-60GB I think.

[Michael]

The best way to think about patching Windows 10 is in groups. If you deployed the original 10240 build, released in August 2015, then these updates are separate to the newer/revised Upgrade 10586 released in November 2015. The same will apply when Microsoft release the next Upgrade later in 2016.

 

To be honest, I wouldn't entertain the idea of deploying 'Upgrades' or in other words, major OS changes such as 10240 > 10586. You're better off building a new image from scratch as it's quicker, but also cleaner.

 

Microsoft unfortunately rename the Windows folder to Windows.old, so it leaves lots of old/unused files behind and the upgrade process is just far too long, unless you have the luxury of being able to do it out of hours or over night, it really isn't an option. The other issue is you cannot Sysprep an Upgraded version of Windows, only a native installed copy, which is another reason to start from scratch.

 

So for example, if deployed the original 10240 build, the latest update is: KB3124266

 

If you deployed 10586, the latest update is: KB3124263

 

My strategy moving forward (more than likely), will be to deploy a new Windows 10 build/image late 2016, taking users from 10240, skipping 10586 and onto the newest build.

[DrCheese]

My strategy moving forward (more than likely), will be to deploy a new Windows 10 build/image late 2016, taking users from 10240, skipping 10586 and onto the newest build.

 

You may as well do the same I'm doing, sticking with the LTSB builds. These will be updated once a year (Hopefully around summer time) & reimaging doesn't take that long.

[cogrady84]

LTSB is the only way to go if you value reliability/stability as far as i'm concerned. I'll be deploying new builds as fresh installs as and when microsoft provide new LTSB images.

 

I've managed to get my test rig detected in WSUS now and I have added the new Windows 10 LTSB product classification in WSUS, so it is now syncing the required updates, looks like i'm all set to start testing this with some groups of students...

 

Windows 10 and Office 2016 all at once... my phones going to be off the hook!

Edited February 8, 2016 by cogrady84

[Javik]

I've been using roaming profiles, with folder redirection to the user's home directory path, and 1 gigabyte storage limit per user account.

 

I've been doing this for years without any problems on Windows 7. I expect I will continue this with Windows 10.

[timbo343]

Does LTSB let you upgrade? I seem to think that LTSB doesnt get the upgrades. It will still get the updates but not the Upgrades. Im a bit unsure about it all as we have education images and LTSB images ready to go.

 

With education and enterprise you can defer the upgrades by 9 to 12 months.

[Michael]

LTSB is only appropriate for mission critical/highly specialised Enterprise environments and not Education (in my opinion).

 

You could also argue, Microsoft have created an Education version (be it in name), the same as Enterprise, so it's clear this is what they'd recommend Education customers to use.

 

I have no doubt in my mind Education specific features will come down the line and I think it's all too easy to compare 10240 and 10586 builds, there are no significant differences, however I think Redstone next year will start to introduce more features and then I think the argument to use LTSB will be reduced.

 

Working in Education it's important to keep on top of new developments/technologies and it's clear Microsoft will integrate all this into future Windows 10 builds.

[sparkeh]

Totally agree with @Michael

Don't have a source for this but I do remember MS discussing the Education version potentially having its own API hooks for education specific software in the future (was in an MS blog post if I remember correctly).

[timbo343]

If we were to use LTSB we would have an education image beside it too just incase. What with virtual machines being used as images we can store them where ever.

[Javik]

Why should some schools IT Managers care whether other people use LTSB or not? How do the choices of other more conservative IT Managers have any effect on your choice to use the mainline Education branch?

 

I do not believe that education should just leave itself open to willy-nilly upgrades for whatever Microsoft claims it may or may not be doing next. Their path and motives may change, and those changes may end up being detrimental to the educational environment, requiring a time consuming and costly rollback of hundreds of machines to the prior release.

 

"In order to assist new students in hand-eye coordination skills, we've decided to make Candy Crush a core operating system component that cannot be removed or disabled!"

 

But I'm also the type that believes in waiting for SP1 before even considering a new OS as a replacement for what we have now. For Microsoft's new release plans for Win 10, it looks like SP1 will never be arriving and it will constantly be changing and evolving according to their whims... no thanks.

[timbo343]

LTSB is only appropriate for mission critical/highly specialised Enterprise environments and not Education (in my opinion).

 

You could also argue, Microsoft have created an Education version (be it in name), the same as Enterprise, so it's clear this is what they'd recommend Education customers to use.

 

I have no doubt in my mind Education specific features will come down the line and I think it's all too easy to compare 10240 and 10586 builds, there are no significant differences, however I think Redstone next year will start to introduce more features and then I think the argument to use LTSB will be reduced.

 

Working in Education it's important to keep on top of new developments/technologies and it's clear Microsoft will integrate all this into future Windows 10 builds.

 

Just to be clear Windows dont dish out service packs anymore. These are now known as upgrades and watching the technet conference last night, one of the MVPs tweeted back to me about the CBB upgrades with this link https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt598226(v=vs.85).aspx.

[DrCheese]

LTSB is only appropriate for mission critical/highly specialised Enterprise environments and not Education (in my opinion).

Why? It's the same code as the RTM release of Windows 10. MS have stated they intend on releasing an LTSB every year or so & it's supported for 10 years. My assumption is we'll get another LTSB build when Redstone is out (I would bet money on Server 2016 appearing then as well) Upgrading at this pace seems better than being forced to upgrade the CBB releases every 5 minutes. Waiting a year for the next "$shiny"

 

Don't have a source for this but I do remember MS discussing the Education version potentially having its own API hooks for education specific software in the future

What is "Education specific software"?