Windows 10 has killed this job for me.

[ICT_GUY]

Sorry for not replying.

 

Local profiles were introduced at beginning of term and log on times went down to 20 seconds. Not saving settings is unpopular, but the logon times with roaming profiles were ridiculous and varied between 2 minutes and never.

 

The Microsoft Edge closing down after opening with the following errors The server {F9717507-6651-4EDB-BFF7-AE615179BCCF} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

 

& Faulting application name: MicrosoftEdgeCP.exe, version: 11.0.17134.112, time stamp: 0x5b1a453b

Faulting module name: EdgeContent.dll, version: 11.0.17134.112, time stamp: 0x162279b6

Exception code: 0xc0000409

Fault offset: 0x00000000000ad3ca

 

Was finally fixed with a registry setting. I imported the following registry settings via a gpo "reg add “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Spartan” /v RAC_LaunchFlags /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f"

 

Fixing that particular issue also allows windows 10 to open pdfs by default. Stress levels hopefully will subside a little.

 

I thrive on fixing issues. Unfortunately when there are issues that defy logic and should not be there it drives me insane. I also wish I could just switch off the reverting to default app crap. That is such a bug bear.

Edited September 19, 2018 by ICT_GUY

[gshaw]

Embrace W10, it works differently. Review every GPO. Try to come off any W7 customisations, they don't coexist well. Don't try to control the Start menu or taskbar, they don't want to be. GPO necessary icons onto the desktop. Update your WSUS but exclude drivers. Get rid of third party AV, Defender works well. Set overnight restarts for computer suite machines to allow them to update.

 

In time you will see how much more self-managing W10 is, not to mention tremendously more secure. Your fleet of machines will settle down and remain up to date and more stable than W7.

 

Agree with most of that but no problems with Start Menu \ Taskbar provided:

 

a) you use local profiles not roaming

b) you ensure that the XML headers for the layout file are formatted correctly (there's two schemas for Start Menu and Taskbar that both need to be there)

 

I created a new GPO for Windows 10 customisations so we could test with just those running and layered on top of existing Windows 7 settings. Apart from removing my old Start Menu pin scripts not found any clashes but again it's all about how much you test it and what your old GPOs are doing.

 

Wholeheartedly agree with the poster above about the OneDrive updater, absolutely stupid to have it running from AppData and not be managed by WSUS. However Files on Demand is awesome and effectively gives all our users 1TB Document folders

Edited September 19, 2018 by gshaw

[Marcs_Dad]

Keep the faith brother, and don't start to doubt your talent. It's an impossible job, especially when you have nobody else to bounce off. An establishment that is only employing you term time with no holiday cover is planning for a disaster (unless it is so small that it runs itself, which I doubt). Don't throw the towel in just yet, and get to speak to your line manager about the situation.

These systems are so complex nowadays, with the network team expected to sort out all the various technologies without any training (apart from forums like EduGeek etc). Even major revision changes of key software is problematic, because you take a working system and potentially break it (depending on how well the supplier has sorted out the bugs and issues).

One solution would be to hire in a Company to support you with thee issues, and to perhaps help you get everything up and running, which you can then manage. You cannot be expected to cope by using google to fix your problems, and if your origination does not agree, then they are fooling themselves.

 

By the way, i'm running a 500 desktop estate and with two technicians as well as my self, and still running good old Windows 7. Windows 10 can wait.

 

Good luck

Dave

[Sheridan]

I feel your pain,we're fully on W10 and I wish I'd held back and waited for LTSB 2019. Generally we've got a lot of things working, but updates, printers and start menus cause daily headaches. Plus I'm sick of finding inconsistencies and new problems (like the one I've been looking at recently where all users can browse hidden network shares/drives and even run control panel apps through that damned 'type to search' start menu/cortana)

 

I know a lot of people like W10, but I've been in the IT game since my COBOL days, and I've never seen an OS that is like this, it really is a botched up version of Vista! Theres a few people on here who say they've had few problems, but I've found our desktop related issues have shot up since moving from W7.

 

And its not just at work, I helped a relative buy a nice shiny SSD based nippy i5 laptop - 6 hours to get the stupid updates on before the thing ran normally, as the updates pushed the CPU to 99% continuously - I've now ditched my home W10 and moved to a macbook, something I never would have considered 2-3 years ago.

 

Microsoft lost the way with 8 and W10 was a mashed up attempt to get back to the popularity of Xp/W7.

[Simcfc73]

I have mandatory profiles for kids and roaming for staff, logon times have never been great.

 

Do you guys who use local profiles have mandatory ones or just local which get deleted after each reboot? I played with UEV and got Outlook working but never got much else to play nice.

[Sheridan]

We started with a stripped out (i.e remove the crud apps) W10 Edu from scratch and have always used local profiles, which are purged when they haven't been used for 8 weeks. Initial login times are 30-60 seconds depending on the age of the PCs (all SSD based) and around 8-15 seconds once they have a profile.

[3s-gtech]

Same here - mandatory for pupils, local for pupils. No redirected AppData. Logon times are good - 30 seconds max? Mix of machines from Core 2 Duo up all with SSDs.

[DrBeaker]

Has anyone gone from using roaming profiles to mandatory or local profiles and seen a noticeable real-world difference? On paper obviously there's a difference in speed/logon time. AFAIK (I'm still new to the RM setup) RM still use roaming profiles, they've said they "might" phase them out altogether further down the road. These does seem to be a cause of "slow logons".

[FishCustard]

We use Win 10 1709 (soon to be 1809) and haven't had any real issues. Happy to demonstrate / bounce ideas with anyone who wants to come for a look; we're near Heathrow.

 

We use roaming profiles but no roaming AppData. Then again, all our machines have SSDs and we have a 1 Gbps-to-the-device network.

[mavhc]

I feel your pain,we're fully on W10 and I wish I'd held back and waited for LTSB 2019. Generally we've got a lot of things working, but updates, printers and start menus cause daily headaches. Plus I'm sick of finding inconsistencies and new problems (like the one I've been looking at recently where all users can browse hidden network shares/drives and even run control panel apps through that damned 'type to search' start menu/cortana)

 

I know a lot of people like W10, but I've been in the IT game since my COBOL days, and I've never seen an OS that is like this, it really is a botched up version of Vista! Theres a few people on here who say they've had few problems, but I've found our desktop related issues have shot up since moving from W7.

 

And its not just at work, I helped a relative buy a nice shiny SSD based nippy i5 laptop - 6 hours to get the stupid updates on before the thing ran normally, as the updates pushed the CPU to 99% continuously

 

Updates are mostly better now, being as there's just 1 main one at any point in time.

 

Printer drivers need updating for the new features, I don't try to control the start menu so that's not a problem, just teach people to use search. I had the opposite problem to start with, couldn't block/allow specific Control Panel/Settings pages until a later version

 

Would have been longer with Win7, probably 200 updates to install now

[Sheridan]

I think if we could get updates, printing and less start menu issues I would be happier as the login and boot times have been better. But things like the run from type to search make me worry what I’m missing in W10 as it seems to provide more worries than 7 did. And every updates fixes 10 things and breaks 10 more...

[maark]

my win 10 home machine don't always run great even with SSD - have got dual boot into linux.

Am turning into a Microsoft basher but I think they have lost their way.

[buzzard]

I have to say, I've worked on W10 for 18 months (now for a 3rd party supplier to schools and businesses) and once you get to a working platform (we run with 1803) it does work. I totally get how much effort it takes and the issues in getting there. I had a battle here to get them to drop cloning (Using Acronis Snap Deploy) and move over to MDT and then to move from other traditional technology to the "Windows 10" way of doing things and in the whole it works well, its not as stable or forgiving as a W7 system, but thats had the best part of a decade to iron bugs out. I've been around long enough that I've worked on all flavours of Windows from 3.1/NT upwards in schools and for me W10 is the best imho. Staff need to be aware that the crappy old obsolete apps such as RM Maths wont work on Windows 10 correctly etc and when they first migrate to W10 the start menu will be basic (we just present Chrome, IE and 6 Office 2016/365 Apps) We use roaming profiles and use folder redirection (inc AppData). Most of our data is cloud based (in Box) and we use OneLogin for SSO for all of our Website subscriptions services and it all just works well. As usual the hardest thing is making sure you have enough resource, mainly time to be able to develop and test the W10 system, including UAT testing (we tend to do one traditional IT Classroom), but you do need SLT/Staff on board. Good luck with it and keep going, once its mature it'll be better!

[caffrey]

I'm thinking the majority of the issues are that Microsoft are seriously pushing single device single user with everything off prem, probably to compete with Google. The desktop versions of Windows just seem to be taking a back seat especially with Myerson leaving Microsoft this year

[free780]

Yep 1:1 seems to be the go to phrase when we got an issue with shared devices.

[browolf]

have always used local profiles, which are purged when they haven't been used for 8 weeks.

 

How does that happen?

[sted]

How does that happen?

theres a gpo for it.

 

computer config/admin templates/system/user profiles/delete user profiles older than a specified number of days on system restart fill in the number in the box to what makes sense for you

 

[sonofsanta]

Gods, I feel your pain @ICT_GUY. Well, some of it: at least I have techs to help me. I don't know how you're managing it all as a one-man band.

 

I've had Win10 at home for a couple of years and liked it, and I thought I'd waited out the early teething problems everyone here had been posting about, so I didn't think the upgrade would be too difficult. I'd done the job once before in moving from XP to 7, after all, and that went really well, and cut down on our day-to-day issues massively. I knew there'd be work involved--better just to filter out all the old GPOs and work from scratch, albeit leaning on old configs to make sure you didn't miss anything--but I didn't think it'd be too hard.

 

Bloody hell. I didn't half meet reality with that one.

 

This entire OS is built for two markets: (a) consumers (b) people who live in Microsoft Surface adverts. The ability to administer it centrally has gone backwards by a decade. There are things we can no longer control by GPO but have to do by tweaking the image, which--ha ha--isn't exactly easy to update if you change your mind later. There are settings that have lost their GPOs and now require obscure reg keys. There are settings that change every six months with a new update and when you try and Google an answer you get something that applies for 1709 but it won't work on 1803, don't be silly!

 

Old stuff gets deprecated before the new stuff is ready. IE being dropped in favour of half-baked Edge is the obvious example, but afharfkaytkaytwjywegge:mad:sgesgaetg UE-V! Granted, Roaming Profiles were not perfect, but they did what I wanted in letting people move between computers. UE-V, the supposed replacement, works some of the time for some of the things and doesn't work quickly enough for some other things (Start Menu, Sticky Notes) and is incapable of doing other things altogether (email signatures! Because who needs them in a corporate environment, ffs). It's like the developers get excited about a new idea and develop the first version in a rush of inspiration and get it working 85% of the time, then realise the remaining 15% of edge cases & documentation & helpful error logging will take just as long with far less dopamine reward and just... move on to the next thing.

 

(Currently extra-annoyed at UE-V as it somehow, mystifingly, seems to break Word & PowerPoint 2016's Share > Email. HOW. HOW IS IT INVOLVED AT ALL. WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE.)

 

They seem to think, as others have said, that we all live in an age of 1:1 devices, or worse, 1 user:4 devices and we all move between a desktop and a Surface and a laptop and a flippin' HoloLens and need a different experience on each. But we don't! We all move between functionally identical desktops where the only difference is the IP of the printer I want connected! I want the Start Menu customisations to roam and the default apps to be the same and everything to be easily configurable from a domain controller!

 

But no. Because they're not developing Windows for the bread-and-butter corporate customer anymore; they're chasing shiny consumer features, and never mind those of us who get the blame when it's their stupid mess. Never mind if you don't want Cortana, or the Solitaire Collection, or things to actually work on the first login. Never mind.

 

Right, enough ranting. I've got to try and fix the default app for PDFs for the fourth time...

[AJWhite1970]

I put an all staff email out this morning basically saying that the Windows 10 roll-out in the summer, while finished, has a few rough edges (printing being by far the roughest one....) that we are still working on.

 

Fortunately, nothing bad enough for teachers to be unable to teach, students left unable to learn or admin staff unable to drive spreadsheets but still a long way below what I would personally consider our usual standards.

 

Windows 10 is very much a work in progress for all of us in the industry at present with no right answers but multiple wrong ones....

[FishCustard]

It's like the developers get excited about a new idea and develop the first version in a rush of inspiration and get it working 85% of the time, then realise the remaining 15% of edge cases & documentation & helpful error logging will take just as long with far less dopamine reward and just... move on to the next thing.

 

I don't share many of your other feelings about Windows 10, but this I can agree 100% on.

[jthompson]

I find the information density is annoying low in some of Win10's UI, compared to the Win7 equivalents. I like lots of information density, so it feels really dumbed down at times.

[mavhc]

They're spending most of their money on switching to getting rid of windows server and paying per user per device per month, azure ad, intune etc

[FishCustard]

They're spending most of their money on switching to getting rid of windows server and paying per user per device per month, azure ad, intune etc

To which I say "Shoo! Sod off."

[mavhc]

To which I say "Shoo! Sod off."

 

Indeed, I'll stick with "thanks for the free forever win10 pro upgrades, I'll keep using that until I get around to putting linux on everything"

[sted]

To which I say "Shoo! Sod off."

 

but enterprise/school is no longer their target audience its 1:1 devices with light touch management and they dont look like changing that anytime soon which is why i keep looking more and more into azure ad and tbh chromebooks. My laptop at home is now iffy (thanks dell <2 years old and this 2k laptop has issues out of warranty) and im just not going to replace it i barely use anything at home but a chromebook and the nuc i have under the tv. if the nuc dies i think im just going to try putting my chromebook there as a replacement and if that works just getting a chromebox rather than a windows box