Best Practice for Introducing Windows 10

[Nausing]

Hello,

 

We are currently running a domain with Windows 7 clients.

 

What is the best way to introduce Windows 10 clients on to the domain and ensure profiles, GPOs etc. all work as expected?

 

How did you do this?

 

Thanks

[Chuckster]

Do LOTS of testing - I cannot stress this enough. Trial it, say, in a single ICT suite where there'll be many users. Have them feedback all the hiccups back to you and fix those niggling bits, and then deploy site wide. That's how I did it.

[Rob_D]

We used WMI filtering so we could separate policies for windows 10 and windows 7, and made sure the users had completely new profiles (on our system win10 uses V6 profiles so again separate from any win7 settings).

And, as Chuckster says, lots of testing. Maybe a phased rollout, start with a few people you like, or you know will give good feedback. Then when you've kicked all the kinks out for them, push it out to another group, rinse and repeat until your whole site is there.

We're still testing and coming up against lots of problems, but so far this seems to be working okay.

[Nausing]

We used WMI filtering so we could separate policies for windows 10 and windows 7, and made sure the users had completely new profiles (on our system win10 uses V6 profiles so again separate from any win7 settings).

And, as Chuckster says, lots of testing. Maybe a phased rollout, start with a few people you like, or you know will give good feedback. Then when you've kicked all the kinks out for them, push it out to another group, rinse and repeat until your whole site is there.

We're still testing and coming up against lots of problems, but so far this seems to be working okay.

 

How did you separate the profiles for users which would log into both Win 7 and 10 clients?

 

Thanks for your reply.

[3s-gtech]

If you run .v2 and .v5/6 profiles they are separated automatically.

[gaz350b]

We are in the process of deployment similar to what rob said. Key thing we have found is to also monitor key parts of your network throughout each phase.

 

We had a situation where we didn't pickup a policy not applying correctly this caused a large spike in internet activity when we ramped up from 10 user base to our stage 2 where we doubled the amount of machines we had to in 1 go.

 

We have duplicated our Computer OU structure to separate 10 and 7 clients. Which should also allow us to clear any old defunct computer accounts out at the end of the migration.

 

The approach you take really depends on how complicated your policies, ou structure and quantity of machines you have.

 

This is also a good time to look at your policies and give them a spring clean to see if you really need all those settings under windows 10.

[Wubbalubbadub]

I would start on the start menu.. Once you have that working i would say it is pretty simple from there on.

 

I feel dumb for saying this, but i havn't made seperate GPO's for win 10 machines.. so far, every policy that had the effect on windows 7, carried onto 10. Its only a few win 10 specific things i had to add to the old win 7 GPO's. For example the "we are glad you are here, screen"

 

I have resided myself to not deploying any kind of start menu to staff, and as the ones above me said. I have now rolled 10 out, to a few key staff that i know will give me some good feedback. So far it has been recieved well!

 

Once i feel happy enough with the staff ones, i will finish deploying to the staff.

[sparkeh]

I would start on the start menu...

I would recommend, like a lot of people on here do, deploying Classic Start. It's miles easier to control than the awful native menu. It will save you a lot of heartache in the long run.