Why are some Secondary Schools still on Windows 7?

[free780]

I'm currently looking at Secondary Schools for my kids.

I'm surprised so many schools still are using Windows 7.

Has someone brought ESU for all these Windows 7 devices.

 

I did a Windows 10 Upgrade/Migration in 2016 in the College I worked at which was pretty seamless.

 

Is it budget/time/politics?

 

In FE/HE there is a big push for Cyber Essentials and you can see it coming to Schools.

Running a EOL OS is an automatic fail unless you have ESU.

 

I also don't understand why TLS certificates are not installed on some school websites or worse VLEs with logins.

[mavhc]

Either they've not spent the money hiring good people, or they've wasted the money outsourcing to companies that do less than the bare minimum.

 

You should ask the schools why they're not investing in their infrastructure and risking GDPR issues.

[hardtailstar]

Is it budget

 

This!

 

Either they've not spent the money hiring good people, or they've wasted the money outsourcing to companies that do less than the bare minimum.

 

You should ask the schools why they're not investing in their infrastructure and risking GDPR issues.

 

You can have the best people in the world but if the school has no money then you cannot invest in good hardware.

[jthompson]

Even if they had bought extended support, I'm not sure why they'd need to do that over switching to 10. It's not as if all of their classroom PCs are running control systems for 20-year old million-pound healthcare equipment.

[ticktock]

Maybe the school has cut back on staff. There used to be 2 of us until cutbacks 4 years ago when one of us was made redundant. I have really struggled for time since then and just managed to update to W10 over summer. A total lack of understanding from SLT didn't help.

[mavhc]

This!

 

 

 

You can have the best people in the world but if the school has no money then you cannot invest in good hardware.

 

humans cost more than hardware.

 

Also upgrading to win10 is free.

[supportman]

Network manager or outsourced company not doing their job properly basically!

 

Running an end of life operating system is just irresponsible.

[hardtailstar]

humans cost more than hardware.

 

Also upgrading to win10 is free.

 

Yes some humans cost more than other humans too.

 

It may be free but when you have hardware that is about 10 years old and barely runs Win7 upgrading to Win 10 crashes the machines a lot. You are kind of stuck.

 

But luckily the LA have been kind and funding some new hardware for us.

[mavhc]

Decent 10 year old hardware with ssd upgrade will run Win 10, 2GB ram is enough, although 4 is much better. I took the spare 2s from the broken laptops to upgrade the other half.

[3s-gtech]

Local school upgraded to Windows 10 earlier this year.

 

Apparently, network logons are a total no-go now, it takes anything from 10-15 minutes to log on locally. I shudder to think what hardware it is, but I'm picturing Prescott Pentium 4s with 2GB of RAM and an 80GB 7200rpm HDD. Which we ditched 8 years ago, and they had SSDs.

 

That's no excuse though - I suspect their rollout of Windows 10 wasn't tested beforehand.

[round2it]

2 years ago i had in depth discussion with senior team re win7 and was ignored, now it is a massive job to get sorted (on my own)

 

but getting there (hate windows to tho)

[jthompson]

Maybe the reason for sticking with 7 is that 10 doesn't work properly with Server 2003.

[LeMarchand]

I still have 3 W7 machines. They're in the Admin Offices and have all sorts of stuff squirrelled away in odd places. No budget to replace, and won't do an in-place upgrade. Have recently replaced some HDDs with SDDs so looking at converting them to VHD (just in case) and making them W10 with the option to open the VHD on the separate drive. Always in use, so stuff has to wait until the hols, by which time TPTB will have created a load more projects.

[leegcvcc]

There are many reasons why still running a lot of Windows 7 machines. Staff reductions, taking on a lot of extra workloads from non IT roles, aging infrastructure, old hardware needs money, time to plan and secure new builds, changing imaging protocols, loads of steep learning curves in a lot of aspects. Not everyone has the same challenges in their roles and saying someone isn't doing their job properly is a bit low! Everyone one would love to have had it totally Windows 10 across the board before now, but the move is massively time sapping for numerous reasons. All excuses, but valid to some I'm sure.

[mavhc]

Which is why it should have been started 5 years ago when win10 came out.

 

Server 2003 is even more horrifying than Windows 7

[leegcvcc]

Maybe the reason for sticking with 7 is that 10 doesn't work properly with Server 2003.

Made me chuckle this one :-) If it wasn't a joke, I might need to hold off my upgrade to 2003 if w10 doesn't play well with it!

[Davit2005]

humans cost more than hardware.

 

Also upgrading to win10 is free.

 

Time is only free if you have the free time

Edited October 2, 2020 by Davit2005

[internetuser]

Which is why it should have been started 5 years ago when win10 came out.

 

Server 2003 is even more horrifying than Windows 7

 

Money and lack of understanding from SMT.

 

If it works why change it attitude, and I suspect legacy software they won’t have licences or support for now.

 

I left education a few years ago and private sector is just as bad. Just because it is wrong does not mean they care, no matter the risk.

 

Wannacry helped with the removal of xp. But windows 7 works so they won’t change it till it’s a deal breaker.

 

The official cost of the esu is mad but people don’t care or will pay it.

[jthompson]

Made me chuckle this one :-) If it wasn't a joke, I might need to hold off my upgrade to 2003 if w10 doesn't play well with it!

 

Yes, it was a joke, but prompted by my reflecting on how much more fiddly it was moving servers from 2008/12R2 to 2019, compared to moving the clients from 7 to 10. Schools that haven't managed to get off 7 yet are likely to be in a similarly bad position on the servers front.

 

I guess if you've got a reasonably streamlined deployment platform in place and a rolling replacement plan for hardware, then it essentially makes OS upgrades a solved problem, even for a one-person-band. Without either of those things, you'd need a special lump of time and money handed to you, which is not really under your control.

 

The more up to date you are, the easier it is to stay up to date. Part of my thinking for not using LTSB.

[Davit2005]

Money and lack of understanding from SMT.

 

If it works why change it attitude, and I suspect legacy software they won’t have licences or support for now.

 

I left education a few years ago and private sector is just as bad. Just because it is wrong does not mean they care, no matter the risk.

 

Wannacry helped with the removal of xp. But windows 7 works so they won’t change it till it’s a deal breaker.

 

The official cost of the esu is mad but people don’t care or will pay it.

 

You can only advise at the end of the day, if they ignore then there is probably little you can do unless you can influence others that may have more influence on SMT. Just protect yourself, speak to a union rep.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Davit2005

[ITGuyNW]

Budget...

 

Just 60 machines left to go...

[leegcvcc]

I guess if you've got a reasonably streamlined deployment platform in place and a rolling replacement plan for hardware, then it essentially makes OS upgrades a solved problem, even for a one-person-band. Without either of those things, you'd need a special lump of time and money handed to you, which is not really under your control. The more up to date you are, the easier it is to stay up to date. Part of my thinking for not using LTSB.

Very good points. Getting to those stages takes a while, longer than anticipated and certainly longer than wanted. Quite lengthy learning curves as well unless you were born into SCCM from an early age!

[Davit2005]

Very good points. Getting to those stages takes a while, longer than anticipated and certainly longer than wanted. Quite lengthy learning curves as well unless you were born into SCCM from an early age!

 

I started years back with thick image ghosting with all the different drivers as different images was a right pain in the rear. MDT or SCCM (I've never used SCCM to deploy images) just seems the way to go to me.

 

Very easy to setup, the only challenge is getting the silent switches working. If you use a VM to do the build you can even setup a pause in the task to install any difficult apps manually. Or deploy extra applications at deployment time.

[localzuk]

I'm going to be blunt and say this is entirely down to poor leadership. Excuses about reduced staffing, old kit, not enough budget are all symptoms of poor leadership at the top of the pile. The headteacher and/or bursar and/or CEO/COO are failing to provide adequate resources to provide key services that schools run on.

 

Yes, we as IT staff can scrabble around cobbling old kit together to keep it running for a bit longer, but all it does is feed back to management that they dunt need to invest.

 

It's 2020. Computers are ubiquitous to our lives. If your school's leaders still can't see that they need to pay to have modern kit, then personally I'd suggest looking elsewhere for a job. If they put that little funding in IT kit, then they're not going to invest in the staff either.

 

If you were looking to send your children to a school that still ran Windows 7 computers, I'd be looking elsewhere and would probably write something to the local papers too.

[Steve21]

Aye, in all fairness though I'd much rather a school with full Win7 than a massive mix up like what I've inherited.

 

My new place currently has Win7, 1507, 1607, 1703, 1709, 1803, 1809, 1903, 1909 and my desktop 2004 build!

 

Seemingly the old company running the place couldn't apparently get WSUS or SCCM to work so everytime they upgraded an area it has the "latest" version of Windows in it, like whhhaa.... No wonder they have so many issues even with basic things like a program being compatible across suites

 

And we wonder where all schools money is going!

 

Much to do much to do!

 

Steve