Rolling Back to Windows 7

[Sheridan]

Anyone else decided to do this? We did lots of testing with 10 but in our small IT Suite where we deployed 10 we've had enough complaints and issues to warrant rolling back to 7.

 

Basic stuff like the Start menu hanging, 'Please wait' permanently on boot, failing to connect to WSUS, failing to connect to printers, failing to login,hanging on 'Locking' etc are showing that 1607 breaks as much as it fixes.

 

So for now, we ditch 10 and welcome back 7. Maybe in a year or two Windows 11 will sort these out.

[newpersn]

Anyone else decided to do this? We did lots of testing with 10 but in our small IT Suite where we deployed 10 we've had enough complaints and issues to warrant rolling back to 7.

 

Basic stuff like the Start menu hanging, 'Please wait' permanently on boot, failing to connect to WSUS, failing to connect to printers, failing to login,hanging on 'Locking' etc are showing that 1607 breaks as much as it fixes.

 

So for now, we ditch 10 and welcome back 7. Maybe in a year or two Windows 11 will sort these out.

 

I'm riding the storm with Windows 10. Settled down since friday last week. Only got 4 IT rooms on 10. Other rooms are still on 7.

 

There is a fix for Windows update and WSUS due next week. (ive disabled the windows update service until i manually update the computers (i hope i can download the fix without using windows update))

Same for the printers. I fix is near. (i'm sure i read that in another topic)

 

The only other problem is the black screen after login in. (got to turn the computer physically off and on fix that problem)

[Sheridan]

Since we updated our image to 1607 we've had more issues than ever. IE11 has to be re-enabled, which then means all users are asked for their default app choice again - which means they then have to have permissions to change default apps!

 

Its so unreliable as well - 'Group Policy service failed the login' is now a regular error I hadn't seen since we tried out Windows 8.

[2ilent8cho]

This is why we are not excited about Windows 10 on the sites we support that run Windows. They can stay on 7. We moved to Windows 7 within a few weeks of it going gold back in 2010, so its not like we don't go for the latest and greatest quickly, but Windows 8 was utter cow dung, and Windows 10 seems just as bad, a polished turd is still a turd. The amount of people using Classic Shell on Windows 10 should scream that Microsoft still don't have it right, you should not need to install 3rd party GUI's to make the OS nice to use.

 

Windows 10 just seems like a mess, and even if you get it all working fine, the next update changes so much because Windows is now a SaaS, it could break loads of things again. I hope the next 4 years of Windows 7 support is enough time to get the bulk over to Mac OS and iOS with iPads for the schools we have that are still on Windows.

[AJWhite1970]

I had a working image on 1511 NTSB ready to go at the start of the summer and nearly pulled the trigger. Then the release date for 1607 NTSB was the 1st October and that made me stop and think. In the end I decided to hold it back and left Windows 7 on for one more year. In hindsight I'm really glad I did, given the workload I've currently got at least my desktops aren't causing any issues using a tried and trusted image that's 3 years old but continually patched using PDQ.

[Sheridan]

Its made me realise how solid Windows 7 has been over the last few years. Even Applocker can't be relied on as well as the old SRP.

[FragglePete]

We deployed Windows 10 to some 568 machines over the summer, and sure, we've had a few issues but generally we're on top of most of them and by the end of the first week things are settling down and general comments are positive.

 

I remember when we did XP to Windows 7.... similar issues, had a few problems but it settled down quickly and indeed did mature to a good O/S overall.

 

There has been a bit of frustration on our part with 1607 though; I had the previous edition running sweetly on a few test machines and a bit dismayed at how much was broken with the anniversary update - still, fortune favors the brave

 

Pete

[NviGate_Systems]

One of the consistent issues with Windows 10 is how Microsoft has gone in reverse with features like:

 

Hybrid Power - Out of the box (Not sure about VL/EDU SKUS) If you click shutdown, it does not shut down. Instead, it closes apps and hibernates the system. This makes the system more vulnerable to memory leaks and other glitches as a result of buggy apps (and Windows!) not releasing resources or simply misbehaving.

 

XML & Metro Apps - With Metro/Modern Apps there is a whole new slew of issues caused by permissions and generally bad coding. Add to this that you are migrating core Windows Apps to this Metro/Modern design, and this can account for huge issues. This, I suspect is the reason Start/Settings and many other apps don't always work as planned. One of these days I need to setup a VM, replicate it and inspect permissions, registry entries and figure out what really causes the apps to be so crippled.

 

Windows Update & Provisioning - Following the model from Windows 8, Windows Update is a whole new ball of wax, running on the new Metro/Modern system. Even though Windows 10 will stage updates and postpone them, it often disrupts running services and device availability. Often times updates will appear out of nowhere at a time Windows 10 deems it "right" to install. I've seen cases where an update caused major IO devices to stop working, Wireless, USB. Tell the machine to reboot and suddenly it's doing updates then restarts and everything works.

 

Windows 10 at it's heart is merely a public beta that you get to pay for.

 

Rant of the day.

[Sheridan]

Our upgrade from xp to 7 was a breeze compared to this. We tweaked an image of 7 and rolled it out. Apart from a few tweaks and program specific issues we carried on for years. Two weeks with this cludgy mess that 10 is and were ready to roll back.

 

Our job is to provide a reliable tool for the staff and students to use, 10 is not allowing this at the moment and is more of a hindrance.

Edited September 11, 2016 by Sheridan

[3s-gtech]

Took me about six months to get a 7 setup I was totally happy with, in just one suite. Tweaks to our mandatory profile were a big part of it, and the raft of new GP settings that it and Vista introduced. Wasn't a tough job though. I only have 10 on one PC in the wild, as I can't see a benefit in deploying it yet.

[saggu]

We have the blank screen issues even on the new PCs. I have tiered switching on/ off the machine but it didn't work. It seems like it fixes by itself. sometime it is logging in fine and some days it is blank screen. Any suggestion how to resolve this?

 

Thanks

[Blue_Cookeh]

We have the blank screen issues even on the new PCs. I have tiered switching on/ off the machine but it didn't work. It seems like it fixes by itself. sometime it is logging in fine and some days it is blank screen. Any suggestion how to resolve this?

 

Thanks

 

I've had this a couple of times and not seen it resolve it self.

 

Is this the issue where the logon screen is black, but still displays date/time? I've been reimaging those machines, thankfully SCCM makes it a 45 minute automatic jobbie :/

 

In the beginning I was totally in favour of Windows 10, now I'm starting to think I've done the wrong thing in deploying it to our staff/students, none of this stuff came out during testing.

 

Tempted to move over to Chromebooks slowly.

Edited September 25, 2016 by Blue_Cookeh

[Asgard]

We deployed Windows 10 to some 568 machines over the summer, and sure, we've had a few issues but generally we're on top of most of them and by the end of the first week things are settling down and general comments are positive.

 

I remember when we did XP to Windows 7.... similar issues, had a few problems but it settled down quickly and indeed did mature to a good O/S overall.

 

There has been a bit of frustration on our part with 1607 though; I had the previous edition running sweetly on a few test machines and a bit dismayed at how much was broken with the anniversary update - still, fortune favors the brave

 

Pete

 

I'm in a similar boat to you.

 

Deployed Win10 1511 with v5 mandatory profiles to just under 2000 devices and 200 VDIs, after the first week ( mainly "were is this, that" etc ).

 

Feedback has been great and our finance office are the last users on Win7 and there kicking off to be moved to Win10 - but the "cloud based" finance software relies so much on Java on the endpoint and a specific version it's being left until the end of next week.

 

Our major issues and workarounds

 

1. Default Apps

The XML doesn't import unless your an admin so we hit it with a hammer and rolled out a new OemDefaultAppAssociations file to each machine which overwrites the defaults. Main changes we/users wanted

 

Email to outlook 2016

Web browser to IE11

PDFs to Acrobat DC Pro

 

2. Printers

We have always used Kix for our login processing and it worked a dream. What we have now is a post script that runs from the startup folder to map the printer - rather than change GPO to force the Login Script to run before anything else, becuse if MS's stupid login scripts can take up to 5 mins to run. This Maintains a quick login and the printers are mapped straight after login.

 

3. Broke Start Menu on re-login

Seems limited for us because we don't have users logging off then back onto the same machine before a reboot, but to counter this we have a "log off this Device" shortcut on the desktop/startmenu that reboots the computer. Works very well and as the machines are 90% SSD it's not a big gap. Plus it's not like as soon as someone logs off we have someone on their shoulder to login - even in our 150PC digital learning space ( glorified library ).

 

Our start menu is deployed via an XML that is populated from a local folder on the machine.

 

The only outstanding issues is that dispite disabling WUDO we still seem to get bandwidth spikes.

 

We are now looking at creating a new Anniversary update build and enabling App U-EV.

 

I'm almost at the point we're after 10 years I'm seriously considering ditching Mantatory profiles.

 

Roaming profiles were a nightmare when we tested them, but with them baking U-EV into the OS that's were they seem to want to push you, so I now need to figure out the best "profile" strategy, that maintains a quick and consistent login as our mandatory profile from XP,7 and now 10 has all hovered around 9 seconds max.

 

Want to look at OneDrive as a drive mapping and supposedly the iamcloud offering doesn't work with mandatory profiles.

Edited September 25, 2016 by Asgard

[FragglePete]

A few more days on and generally things are positive, but they're are issues and we're working through them. I'm tweaking GPP and GPO's all the time and we're getting there. Frustrated by the odd black screen issue but generally once people are logged on its all good and we're getting comments on the overall speed increase on Windows 10.

 

We are occasionally getting the odd Network Card 'locking out' where although the lights are on at the back, nothing is happening with the card. Only a complete cycle of the power can fix this. We're not sure if this is a driver issue or a 'power' issue overall with spikes upsetting things. I'm still trying to build a picture on the pattern of these occurring.

 

We're not using roaming or mandatory profiles; just doing folder redirection. We used to redirect AppData to their home drives as well, but we now just removed this setting and things stay local and logon times generally are sub 15-20 seconds on most machines - so happy with that, however, for Staff we're still re-directing for now. I'll certainly keep an eye on disk usage but nothing monstrous at the moment.

 

Our WSUS server is based on 2008R2 so have not really had any major issues with that; since applying some of the newer updates this seems to be coping quite well (even if it thinks Windows 10 machines are Vista - I tried a script to fix this but it just reverted back so seems cosmetic). I do have the odd machine that is not reporting back, but we're targetting these and getting the latest updates on manually to ensure they are reporting correctly.

 

We're building Start Menus using Burconix, and this is working well (can add a File Explorer icon in the Start Menu with this) with support from BCX being really good as they are catching up on a couple of things on 1607. This system also does our Printer Deployment so can't comment on other peoples issues applying GPPs for Printers - for us, it's working.

 

I think it's helped getting staff onside at the start and explaining that there are issues that we know about and here's how you can get round them. I did this on the first day back in September where all staff get together in the hall and the Head, SBM, etc (and myself) go over changes that have happened over Summer. The biggest annoyance for us is that staff just don't know how to Sign Out properly, even with me explaining it several times.

 

I'm pushing forward, but as I said, it's bloody annoying really that we have these issues. I'm uncomfortable with the way the Desktop O/S is going in some respects and Microsoft's blue sky thinking on mobile devices, etc, etc - they airy fairy ideas just don't necessarily translate to your generic inner city secondary school.

 

Pete

[Blue_Cookeh]

I'm in a similar boat to you.

 

Deployed Win10 1511 with v5 mandatory profiles to just under 2000 devices and 200 VDIs, after the first week ( mainly "were is this, that" etc ).

 

Feedback has been great and our finance office are the last users on Win7 and there kicking off to be moved to Win10 - but the "cloud based" finance software relies so much on Java on the endpoint and a specific version it's being left until the end of next week.

 

Our major issues and workarounds

 

1. Default Apps

The XML doesn't import unless your an admin so we hit it with a hammer and rolled out a new OemDefaultAppAssociations file to each machine which overwrites the defaults. Main changes we/users wanted

 

Email to outlook 2016

Web browser to IE11

PDFs to Acrobat DC Pro

 

 

Does this stick around when you push a major update like 1607 out to those 1511 clients?

 

My main gripe is that major updates reinstall all modern apps, reset default app associations and resets a load of settings back to defaults.

 

Pissin' annoying.

[Asgard]

Basically it's a GPO that pushes the file from a file share onto the machine (overwrites the file in system32)

 

It worked on the 6 machines we pushed 1607 out to but it's annoyingly stupid having a v5 and v6 next to eachother that are identical!

Edited September 25, 2016 by Asgard

[DrCheese]

My main gripe is that major updates reinstall all modern apps, reset default app associations and resets a load of settings back to defaults.

 

Pissin' annoying.

 

I read the other week that MS have changed this going forward, so any build after 1607 won't reinstall any metro apps you've removed.

[Arthur]

any build after 1607 won't reinstall any metro apps you've removed.

Has that been confirmed? The last thing I read was a bit more vague.

 

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mniehaus/2016/08/23/windows-10-1607-keeping-apps-from-coming-back-when-deploying-the-feature-update/

 

We’re working on solving this particular issue in a future feature update.