Microsoft Set up School PCs App

[PeterH]

Has anyone tried the Microsoft Setup Schools PC app for Win10? It's really quite good. I wanted to try it out for some old laptops without having to bother about domain-joining them and then installing a load of software.

 

You just download the app and install it, and set a few options. It creates a setup package file that you put onto a memory stick. To set up computers, you just plug in the memory stick during the Windows 10 setup "oobe" phase and it sets the machine up for you. The idea is that you could unbox a brand new laptop, switch it on, plug in your memory stick and be up and running with a useable machine in just a few minutes.

 

It seems to be designed to live in the cloud. You can set it up to log into Azure AD (Office 365). No domain join is required if you use this option. If you have Office365 with ad sync, you can log in using your school email and password. Log in and you get a start menu populated with tiles for the Office 365 web apps. Clicking on one will pop it open in Edge, logged into your account and ready to go without any further logins required.

 

Opening the OneDrive app will open your OneDrive storage and show all your files. Clicking to open an office document will open it in the web app so you can edit it. No local install of Office required. Photos and videos will open in the OneDrive app. There's no local storage available, so there's no My Documents, My Pictures and so on. However, you can easily upload files from a memory stick to your OneDrive.

 

The restrictions aren't that great. There's nothing to stop users installing apps from the store, running exe files off a memory stick, or from downloading for example Chrome and installing it. It won't let them run MSIs but that seems to be about the only restriction I can find. There's nothing to stop them going into network settings and disconnecting the WiFi which will stop anyone else from logging in until it is reconnected.

 

There are very few customisation options at the moment. There's no way to customise the login screen, the start page for Edge, or to choose which tiles get displayed on the start menu for example. Although You could probably achieve something by hacking around with login scripts.

 

 

I wondered if it would make a good alternative to Chromebooks. I've often thought it is about time that Microsoft came up with something similar to a chrome book, because google are going to rapidly dominate education otherwise, especially with budgets being cut so much at the moment. I'm not in a hurry to go down the Chromebook route as we don't have google accounts or google directory sync (not yet).

 

So I'm hoping that Microsoft will continue to develop this and address some of the issues. If you're signed up to Office 365, It could be a nice solution for Win10 devices that just need basic internet/cloud/office apps.

[Bob_the_Goon]

I tried it a few weeks ago and I was impressed in how easy it was to setup. As you mentioned, there are many limitations which means I won't be using this any time soon.

 

MS also need to improve their documentation on this as there isn't that much of it. Having said that, the tool is the simple/limited, what else could they document.

 

Hopefully they will develop this tool further and not just forget about it.

[darkstar_bam]

I'm obviously being really stupid but I create the pendrive and then re-install Win 10 Pro on a laptop and once its installed and gets to the setup part I plug the pendrive in but nothing happens? What am I missing?

 

Thanks

[PeterH]

When you've installed Windows 10 Pro, you need to login and then run:

 

c:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe -oobe

 

Then it will shut down. Switch back on again and you will get the regional settings screen where you can set the language and so on. Whilst on that screen, plug in the USB stick. It will recognize it after a couple of seconds and offer to apply the package for you.

[Bezwick]

Hi all, has anyone else been playing with this. I'm finding it great for these little Tablets for our Learning support department. Created a usb installs windows 10 and the applies the Schools App package fine. Just one issue, it locks down all the users for that tablet including the Administrators anyone know how to get it to apply just to the student logins?

 

Thanks

[artfulmatt]

I've just been testing and its a lot of work - things I've found so far....

 

1. On install, if I was behind the internet filter, it would skip the join azure and go through the option of creating a local account.

 

2. Once setup is complete and you sign in with an 365/azure account, you have the student profile which is really well locked down - had to use cmd to enable the local admin account and rename the pc. but once signed in as local admin, I still can't access the c:\drive.

 

3. unable to map a network drive on logon, users can manually do it - but not what I want - if anyone has a way please let me know. (domain GP won't work for obvious reasons, but can't use local GP to run a script because I can't save the batch file to the c:\drive lol)

 

4. All student work has to be done via onedrive (web browser) nothing shows in explorer and onedrive app doesn't seem to open.

 

5. Profiles are local, so over time with hotdesking, the local users directory will become very full

 

Still lots more testing to do, but seems microsoft need to be doing a lot more work before it can be used.

[localzuk]

Can I ask why you'd use this instead of the Windows Imaging and Configuration Designer? The latter seems a lot more flexible, and there's no reason to reinstall Windows 10 to change edition to Education with the package it produces.

[artfulmatt]

Purely testing at the moment, if this ms app was ok, then we could use fog to create an image and role out. But a long way off doing that - I will be looking at windows imaging and config designer.

[gshaw]

Started playing with it but then gone back to MDT so I can deploy Office etc. as part of the image then run sysprep at the end although our tablets are for staff use right now rather than student.

 

Re: profiles from what I remember the shared PC deployment has built-in cleanup processes to remove aged profiles to ensure the local drive doesn't fill up

[Adetokun]

Hello Peter,

I am also trying to deploy this in my environment, however I keep getting ‘This app has been blocked by your System Administrator’ while trying to launch the OneDrive Desktop App. Please help.

[tmoon-mint]

Hello Peter,

I am also trying to deploy this in my environment, however I keep getting ‘This app has been blocked by your System Administrator’ while trying to launch the OneDrive Desktop App. Please help.

 

Is this the Onedrive client that comes pre-installed with Windows? Do you block people from running exe's from Appdata in your environment?