Windows 11 Which Version to Install

[Jobos]

Most of the school is still running win10 1809 LTSC but I will be moving the office to start with to win 11 in the coming weeks but I have heard lots of problems with 24H2 so what is the recommended version of win11 I should install?

 

Thanks.

 

[ITGuyNW]

End date for 23H2 is November 2026, so you'll only get a years worth out of it anyway. I'd go for 24H2 and iron out any issues, such as incompatible drivers. I'm guessing 25H2 will turn up soon too..

[Synkrox]

24H2 Education here. No particular issues. I used to use w10 LTSC and it was a bit scary releasing control.

Had a mega clearout so everything is managed in and deployed with intune and I just kinda let it roll along now.

Also had first batch of hotpatch updates come through recently which seems to have gone quite well, so less rebooting for updates.

 

[3s-gtech]

24H2 has had its issues, but it's what I jumped to here from Windows 10 22H2. Generally been a decent step.

 

Some driver oddness, sorted in MDT. I didn't touch my MDT for it - still using an older version and it's solid.

 

Quite a bit of looking through GP and retiring old policies, customising new ones etc to do.

[Jobos]

Good to know 24H2 is fine to use. Back in the day when using MDT I used the English international iso so I assume international should be used win Win11 too? 

[3s-gtech]

Oh yes, unless you want Windows to be filled with airplanes, could care less, light beer and orange heads of state.

[Fazza]

41 minutes ago, Jobos said:

Good to know 24H2 is fine to use. Back in the day when using MDT I used the English international iso so I assume international should be used win Win11 too? 

 

International English is English (UK) so why it just doesnt say that I dont know as it does say it when during the actual install!

[Olliedawg]

24H2 Education English International here.

 

We're still imaging with MDT & have had no issues rolling out 24H2.

 

 

[timbo343]

I'm in the same boat, which flavour of Win11 to install. It's a toss up between LTSC 2024 or Education 24H2.6 (.6 being the April 2025 release on VLSC). I know both can be deployed out via MDT as per on of my posts after a week of testing.

[DrCheese]

Don't do the LTSC. Yuck.

 

You can't officially run the 365 version Office, nor Teams. You'd have to run the LTSC version of Office.

 

I ran the 1607 LTSC Windows 10 for a year or so back in the day, but swapping to the forward forever one was fairly painless, I just control how quickly the big updates go out via WSUS.

 

 

[DavR]

I've just been prepping 24H2 this week, and have now got a working image which we'll be rolling out over the summer. FYI, the May ISO is now available, with the May cumulative already included.

 

One thing that threw me during testing, though, was I somehow managed to create an image that installs a broken Windows Recovery partition. I don't think I would have noticed, if I wasn't testing Wipe from the Intune console at the time. The Wipe command would start, but drop out at about 20% and say "There was a problem when resetting your PC. No changes were made.". Recreating the image resolved this, though.

[timbo343]

8 hours ago, DavR said:

I've just been prepping 24H2 this week, and have now got a working image which we'll be rolling out over the summer. FYI, the May ISO is now available, with the May cumulative already included.

 

One thing that threw me during testing, though, was I somehow managed to create an image that installs a broken Windows Recovery partition. I don't think I would have noticed, if I wasn't testing Wipe from the Intune console at the time. The Wipe command would start, but drop out at about 20% and say "There was a problem when resetting your PC. No changes were made.". Recreating the image resolved this, though.

 

It was only last month that 24H2.6 (April 2025) was available for download on VLSC. Thanks for the heads up for the May 2025 release - 24H2.7 as this release is known as.

[Koldov]

On 03/06/2025 at 14:50, Fazza said:

 

International English is English (UK) so why it just doesnt say that I dont know as it does say it when during the actual install!

 

I don't know... I think I'm OK with it...

 

Because the English spoken in England is obviously the only correct version and so should be the version spoken 'internationally'...? 

 

To me it's more to do with the fact that the download of the U.S. version (in typical American fashion) represents itself as 'English' without indicating it is the U.S. version and so somehow portrays itself as the primary English language version. Which seems to indicate that if you speak 'English', that this is the version to use...

 

 

However, I think this would be a much more appropriate way to describe them...

 

 

😉

[mrstrong]

On 03/06/2025 at 13:27, Jobos said:

still running win10 1809 LTSC but I will be moving the office to start with to win 11

any reason why ? are you going to intune azure AD or hybrid ? we still mainly 1809 LTSC 

 

[CHiLL]

All our clients are Windows 11 Education 24H2 (English International) and haven't experienced any issues.

[Koldov]

 

Actually I'm surprised with all the Gulf of Mexico shenanigans that there aren't any plans to change it to the 'American' language...

 

Back to the topic though, I'm OK with Windows 10 LTSC and have been since the start so I might go for the Windows 11 version, what am I missing out on (apart from regular updates that potentially break all the things)?

[5nowman]

On 03/06/2025 at 13:40, Synkrox said:

24H2 Education here. No particular issues. I used to use w10 LTSC and it was a bit scary releasing control.

Had a mega clearout so everything is managed in and deployed with intune and I just kinda let it roll along now.

Also had first batch of hotpatch updates come through recently which seems to have gone quite well, so less rebooting for updates.

 

Any reason why you chose education over pro?

school here, 8 admin machines, rest teachers and ICT...

[timbo343]

33 minutes ago, 5nowman said:

Any reason why you chose education over pro?

school here, 8 admin machines, rest teachers and ICT...

Pro doesn't have applocker

 

https://liliputing.com/differences-between-windows-11-home-pro-enterprise-and-education/

[5nowman]

1 hour ago, timbo343 said:

Pro doesn't have applocker

 

https://liliputing.com/differences-between-windows-11-home-pro-enterprise-and-education/

do you actually use applocker?

I have never had to use it and not had a problem either.

 

Can you give some examples of where you use it? or anyone?

[DrCheese]

1 hour ago, 5nowman said:

do you actually use applocker?

I have never had to use it and not had a problem either.

 

Can you give some examples of where you use it? or anyone?

 

We use it to block every app we don't know about. Nothing can run on our PCs that isn't in our approved apps list.

Prevents portable apps from being ran out of users temp files. (Including viruses...)

 

 

[5nowman]

40 minutes ago, DrCheese said:

 

We use it to block every app we don't know about. Nothing can run on our PCs that isn't in our approved apps list.

Prevents portable apps from being ran out of users temp files. (Including viruses...)

 

 

out of curiousity is it a secondary school you look after?

[DrCheese]

9 minutes ago, 5nowman said:

out of curiousity is it a secondary school you look after?

Yes, but I would look to implement Applocker as part of any Windows setup. It's part of a "Defence in depth" plan.

 

[5nowman]

1 minute ago, DrCheese said:

Yes, but I would look to implement Applocker as part of any Windows setup. It's part of a "Defence in depth" plan.

 

Long term you are right.. this needs LOTS of testing as it could kill a system

[mikes]

Applocker is essential IMO, it's not too hard to set it up as you can run it in log only mode to start with to catch anything that your users need that you didn't know ran. (e.g. SIMS as Pulsar.exe) - it also allows MS binaries by default so it's hard to mess up your system with it, like you could have done with Software Restriction Policies.   Without Applocker I've seen it can be very easy for malware to spread as it can write its binaries anywhere on the system, even if the user doesn't have write permissions there, and will sail right past most antivirus software. 

 

We deployed 24H2, only started deploying Windows 11 this year so we wanted the latest version (which can be a mistake looking at all the Server 2025 problems) but it's worked well for us so far. Had the usual silly Microsoft bugs as they never finish their software properly (mouse cursor disappearing on text fields) but have worked around them so far. Using Professional  (apart from our old Win 10 upgraded machines which keep their Education version from Win 10) - doesn't seem to be many differences between Pro/EDU that I can see?

[mavhc]

Why would it be able to write anywhere even if the user doesn't have write permission?