Hoyt

Howdy all, We are just now starting to put Windows 11 PCs into some of our user's hands (waiting until the last minute is mandatory in our organization) and we just noticed that for some reason the DisplaySwitch function does not work when our teachers click on the shortcut on their redirected Desktops nor will it work when they press the Windows logo key and the letter P. When they double click on the shortcut nothing happens. If I log in as myself (Administrator) it works fine. Has anyone dealt with this before? It worked fine from XP all the way through Windows 10. The teachers will often toggle between duplicate and extend mode depending on what is going on.

This one is eerily accurate...

This link may be useful for the initial image: https://schneegans.de/windows/unattend-generator/ As far as making sure things don't come back, Microsoft has never thought that they shouldn't be able to shove a bunch of garbage we don't ask for on our PCs. Our GP disables Windows Update but Copilot showed up everywhere anyway. We do block some things with our Sophos antivirus software to make sure folks can't launch it even if they bring a shortcut in on a flash drive.

I'm going to be the floater in the punch bowl and say "y'all use Microsoft Edge?". All kidding aside when I see something like that I delete the user's local profile (everything for users is redirected here) and if that doesn't help ask them to sign into another PC and see what happens. Back when we still used IE we had to delete profiles more often than we do now. We used a program called delprof2 that we could push out through our remote installers to wipe all local profiles at the click of a button. I got into a habit of doing that right before the end of the school year to avoid headaches at the start of the next. If those two options fail it might be something like Robin is referencing. We are a Google ecosystem here so I'm not well versed with Microsoft sign in processes.

I'm sorry I can't remember the specific GPO setting but years ago we hid drive C from Windows Explorer and prevented typing in paths in explorer Windows. It's worked well so far. If a program tries to save to the HDD it just throws an access denied error then they can select their Documents folder which is redirected to our file servers. Just a quick look shows that we have User Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > File Explorer set to "Hide these specified drives in My Computer" and the option set to enabled and have the option selected "Restrict C drive only". We also have the same option selected in that GPO under "Prevent access to drives from My Computer". Our Desktops are redirected and read only so they can't save stuff there.

The funny thing is I have only encountered one crashed workstation in the past several years, and it was a highly configured unit that a tech decided to upgrade from 1909 to 22H2. My complaint with Windows is all the bloat Microsoft packages in it which prevents it from getting out of its own way.

Interesting that it didn't actually work. In the course of testing I had found a few Group Policy settings that Windows 11 either completely ignore or are only followed on Education Edition. The one thing I would have really liked to see in the list was Microsoft Store.

Redneck word of the day: "twerk". I get up every morning and get twerk.

Reminds me of when a guy at an old honkey tonk asked to borrow a set of jumper cables. The bouncer hollered "Hey, don't y'all start nothin!"

Around here we tend to use John Deere (on the way out for working folks), Kubota, and Cub Cadet. I cheaped out and got this little guy last time. I really should have ponied up and got a Kubota with a bucket to keep the driveway in shape, but that would have eaten into the Harley fund.

Interesting. That's smaller than the vacuum cleaner we use inside the house.

I had to specify "lawn tractor" because I am the only one on my road that doesn't own a full size tractor. My motorcycle addiction does prevent me from being frugal from time to time.

I tried not to celebrate too much when I paid mine off. Even so some of the major appliances somehow got wind of it. Wound up having to replace the entire HVAC system, the stove, and the lawn tractor just to name a few. It wasn't that painful though because I didn't have that bank note anymore. Go somewhere far away from the house and have a party to be safe.

Have you tried using the HP Image Assistant to download and install their latest driver? I've often found that is a quick and easy way to get drivers sorted after Windows "fixes" them. HP Image Assistant (HPIA)

I saw this at a Harley dealership one time. Was tempted to buy out the remaining stock.

That's it in a nutshell right there. Microsoft breaks stuff they claim to officially support all the time. We are not about to start using unsupported methods and then have to explain ourselves when they quit working.

The whole Windows 11 ecosystem is nothing but a Charlie Foxtrot. I would be tickled to just have a BLANK Start Menu. We use redirected Desktops with only the bare minimum of icons on it for basic functionality. We have never allowed any customizable shortcuts since going to Active Directory and it has been great. They want an Internet shortcut? They have to bookmark it. We aren't wasting resources on placating user wish lists. It's infuriating how many Group Policies are in place that Windows 11 has been specifically programmed to ignore. The "Pro" version of Windows now is basically the same as the Home version with the ability to log on to a Domain (to which it ignores a good bit of its policies).

Especially with Windows 11 Microsoft has removed a lot of management functions from all versions except for Education. I poured over the list one time recently and was shocked at how many management options they even removed from the Enterprise version. We don't use Intune yet but there are tons of settings in Group Policy that only work or are only present in the Education Edition.

Thom we use redirected Desktops which helps a lot. Also if initial logins are slow check this in your Group Policy: Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, System, and open Logon Disable Show first sign-in animation If I am remembering correctly this is what I did years ago when we first went to Windows 10 to speed up the first login of a user to a PC.

It has been amusing to me to watch the correlated increase in technology use here with the decrease in actual test scores. Staring at a screen is a very poor form of retention, but you can't tell that to someone that wants to look good in front of the TV cameras. They have created a generation of kids that have no fine motor skills at all due to the insistence that EVERYTHING must be done on chromebooks. It's a sad thing to see. My Wife had a high school student that didn't even know how to tie a bow (Velcro sneakers FTW). It's a long shot when ordering new chromebooks to get them to match up but we have been able to rob some screens out of older 14" chromebooks to replace broken ones of similar models that are still technically "supported".

Thanks for the clarification Andy I think I was looking at the wrong picture (it looked like the one she has now). They had a video that shows it very clearly. I passed that link along to her since Grainger over here carries it. This lady is actually a forty year IT veteran that just helps us out part time after retiring from a manufacturing plant down the road.

Thanks for the tips. I know she has a Klein but I don't know if it's the one Andy listed or not. She doesn't seem to be able to bear down on it hard enough to get a proper crimp with it, that's why I was thinking of a ratchet type. When I loaned her my Stewart crimper she did fine with it. She can do Keystone jacks just fine with a 110 punch down tool, but a lot of runs (such as to access points) require an RJ45 plug be installed. I never thought about this type of problem before she described it to me, but I bet it is common, we just aren't a big enough organization to have encountered it before. We've never used any of the pass through RJ45 connectors before. I guess I've just never felt the need to. Are there any advantages other than making it easier for a novice technician?

Howdy all, We do all our own cabling here and I have loved the Stewart Connector RJ45 crimpers we got somewhere umpteen years ago. They have a ratchet mechanism that makes it easy for women with small hands to make good crimps. We have a part time lady that is VERY good but has small hands and has trouble with most of the budget crimpers that wouldn't give other folks any trouble. Nobody left above ground can remember where we got those Stewart Connector crimpers with the RJ45 dies in them and I haven't had any luck finding any here in the US. Do any of y'all know of any ratchet handle crimpers that work well that we might could get for her? Thanks for your time.

One thing we've noticed is just like PCs chromebooks get slower as the OS is updated. That's a danger when considering used. When Google got sued to extend the AUE administration here used that as an excuse not to swap out older units. As a result they are now so slow that they hang when trying to load TestNav and the batteries are swelling up so bad they are bulging the palm rests. As far as touch screens go they did order some for the lower grades and we have found that they seem to fail easier than the non touch screens do. I'm not talking breakage, weird black lines running across the screens that we do not see in the non touch models. Also we have gotten several new replacement touch screens from HP that will display a good image but the touch function doesn't work and we wind up having to replace that screen with another new one to get it working. It's been a real pain. Due to various reasons we use the HP 14" models they specifically design for school use. The keys aren't too easy to pluck off and if they do pick some off I have been able to swap them over from donor keyboards with a pair of magnifying glasses pretty easily. I haven't used a lot of other brands myself but we hired a tech from across the state line who had to work with Dells and he said he doesn't think they were as robust as the HPs we are using.

That does sound like a good combo for a clean installation. What we wind up doing though is creating an image and then running Sysprep on it before deployment. It really saves time when we get a large shipment of PCs. I was wondering how to eliminate all the startup questions when booting up a Sysprepped image. I have seen it done from a vendor once, but I don't know how they did it.