[ltsb, 1607] Start Menu Dilemma

[_techie_]

Hi.

 

Been rolling out in a small scale Win10 LTSB 1607 to our Admin, "Non-hot desking" offices.

Everything has been going as planned with the exception of the start menu!

 

I had classic shell rolled out and working with a combination of the ADM templates and the registry key settings, but some users have reported issues with the dreaded explorer.exe thread counts going through the roof (identified through resource monitor) causing their machines to hang momentarily.

Only solution was to close explorer if possible, or a force remote logoff and back on again to reset explorer.exe

 

Testing has shown that any configuration of ClassicShell Start Menu has been causing the issue, with explorer threads waiting and remaining open. Removing any classic shell start menu config via registry or ADM templates has resulted in stability. So far I am fairly happy with this and my admin users are now not moaning at me, however it leaves me with a very unlocked start menu (not really suitable for students or even teaching staff!)

 

So where to go?

 

I have managed to get a standard Win10 LTSB start menu that is fairly locked down now, which is suitable for students. We also use Citrix, so I am now considering my options for these Office users to login and get a working start menu, without letting them shutdown the XenApp server, without configuring the start menu using Classic Shell.

 

I tried applying s start menu layout and settings to LTSB using Group Policy:

1) Create layout as appropriate on PC

2) Export Layout using powershell ExportLayout and XML file created.

3) Apply Policy to Start Layout pointing to created file in readable location, but my settings don't seem to apply! This in terms of the icons applied to the left hand side of the menu itself. I didn't pin any items to the start tiles...

 

Yet to try on anything but LTSB, but is this a limitation of LTSB (I had activated Windows BTW). Do I need to be on 1703/1709 + for this to work? This leaves me in a sticky situation with Citrix as Server 2016 is only 1607 equivalent.

 

 

Ideas/suggestions welcome!

 

Thanks

_techie_

[Simcfc73]

I'm in a similar boat. I run W10 enterprise and the rest of my domain is LTSB with classic shell.

 

I truly despise the start menu in windows 10, I've just spent 2 hours trying to sort mine out on my own pc. I can't pin anything to it, its not using the layout I asked it to in group policy anymore.

 

I know we need to use the w10 start menu eventually but I havent got time to do this on every rebuild, I know lots of people use it successfully.

[Michael]

If you install CS with just the Start Menu component, (custom install) removing both the Explorer and Update components, you'll have zero issues.

 

The whole purpose of CS was to address the buggy Start Menu in earlier builds and this would apply to LTSB 1607 which is only the third generation of Windows 10 build wise. It's only in the latter 1709+ version admins have had more success.

[bknaggs]

@_techie_ Do you use roaming profiles in your network? I found that since moving everyone to local profiles I've not had any reports of explorer freezes and I've not made any changes to my Classic Shell configuration.

[_techie_]

Hi both.

Was only running classic start menu, not explorer or the other components, and still had issues. Only running local profiles and still experiencing these hang ups.

 

Only certain staff complaining about explorer issues but removing classic shell and going back to built in Win10 menu have stopped the build up of explorer threads which was causing the issue.

 

Have decided to pull the plug on it now as not being able to configure CS means it’s a no go on Citrix as we run XenApp so need to remove the shutdown button.

 

So far apart from the poor appearance of Win10 menu, I have managed the following:

 

Removed ability to shutdown or restart the PC/Citrix

 

Prevent any messing about and customisation of the start menu and tiles

 

Redirect to a read only folder on the local PC for users (separate for Staff and students). I have populated this via preferences or at install of apps.

 

I am now working on search results and controlling indexing via GPO to limit this to the Start Menu only for pupils to stop them wandering off into Windows etc

 

Hope this helps!

[Areku]

If its any consolation we had to pull CS as well, for the same reason, and yes all local, only thing we used was offline files to sync documents.