Hoyt

Is this image for multiple different PC models or a single one? We generally order our PCs in large enough quantities where we can get by with just a dozen images or so. I just create a Windows installation on a given PC model, configure it the way I want, they run Sysprep with the shutdown option. I then clone it for later distribution. Lately I've just used Clonezilla to back up the image to one of my file servers. Then when deploying Desktop PCs I just boot them up with a Clonezilla flash drive and copy the image to the PC then start it up. When we have PCs that are easy to access the drives (like laptops) we have a sixteen slot imager that we can duplicate drives on (again using the Sysprepped image). These days with NVMe SSDs creating a new Windows installation is so quick I'll do that instead of trying to update an older one.

We are just now dealing with this on some new images. I started down the rabbit hole of pushing out a powershell script to uninstall Copilot since we only run updates during the summer. The problem seems to be (from my limited understanding) that there are two instances of Copilot. One is just called "Copilot" and the other one is called "Microsoft 365 Copilot". The following Poershell lines remove "Copilot": Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers *CoPilot* | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online | where-object {$_.PackageName –like "*Copilot*"} | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -online However I haven't had any luck removing "Microsoft 365 Copilot". Google and it's AI parrot say that this line will remove it: Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Where-Object {$_.Name -Like "*Microsoft.Copilot*"} | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers -ErrorAction Continue But it hasn't for me. Has anyone gotten a powershell script to remove that last bit? For now just yanking it out will suffice for us.

If I'm remembering correctly Pete has a good point. Google will keep that C:\Program Files (x86) installation directory throughout its lifespan sometimes if you don't uninstall it. What we did during the Chrome changeover from C:\Program Files (x86) to C:\Program Files was use our EMCO Remote installer to uninstall the old Chrome installation before installing the new one. That got the install moved out of the C:\Program Files (x86) directory. EMCO is a pretty handy tool you can set it up to do however many machines you want at once. I have my EMCO program organized by Schools, then sub categories for office, teachers, and students. I usually create a batch file referencing all the commands I want so I can just set up each task and not have to enter command switches into EMCO. That way if something changes I just modify the batch file and don't have to make changes in my EMCO tasks. I don't know how the uninstall of the older versions could be handled in G.P. but I thought I'd toss this out there since that brain cell raised its hand.

We use redirected Desktops as well and have had to deal with this issue. In our case we found that for a while the 64 bit Chrome installers still installed into the Program Files (x86) directory. Then at some random time the installers we downloaded started installing into the Program Files directory instead, which broke our shortcuts. Is it possible you had an older Chrome installer laying around? Edit: Looking at your source in the screenshot that is a current installer. Don't know how it wound up in the x86 directory. We use EMCO remote installer for a lot of our installs and haven't seen this yet. That being said Chrome is in our images so I don't install it remotely as often as I used to.

Again y'all have gotten my interest. We have had the globe indicating no Internet connection on Windows 10 PCs for years (still don't have any Win 11 units deployed yet). The only problem it really seems to cause us is clip art in Microsoft Office isn't available. Everything else works fine. It's been completely random too. You can reboot a lab of PCs several times and get different units showing the globe after a while. When I get some time I'll try to disable IPv4 Checksum Offload to see if it helps. I don't think we've gotten any complaints on wireless devices, but then again only administrators have Windows laptops, all others are Chromebooks.

Hey Lemmy, I mean Sheridan, have you got a spare machine you can test with? Maybe set it up and put the machine name in the same GP OU as the machines you are having trouble with but keep an eye on it to make sure nothing installs after you connect it. Then log on with a test account (that is in the same OU as your users) and let it sit. We have noticed this problem on Windows 10 workstations as well and it seems to be random for us. Unfortunately we don't have enough staff to be overly concerned with it. I'm almost hoping we get audited one day so the school board will be forced to hire qualified staff, but the Wicked always prosper in this life...

Thanks for the extra info Sephiroth. For better or worse I got into this sort of thing back in the Basic/DOS days and never seemed to graduate much above that. I never learned anything about HTML or stuff like that. I do want to learn more about PowerShell though because I still use a lot of batch files in my daily routine. I'll create a .bat file with the commands I want and push it out to our Windows clients using EMCO Remote Installer. I would also like to know how to neaten things up like you mentioned. I don't know which spaces are necessary and which ones are just there because they got pasted in from somewhere else. To give you a better idea of my skill level I created a script with what you just posted, which I'm sure works for you and nothing happens for me, it just blinks and goes away. Thanks again to everyone that chimed in. I used to browse usenet back in the day and got so busy I sort of fell out of posting on forums for work and just did it for my personal hobbies. I have to remember that it's a lot cheaper and less frustrating to learn from other folks' mistakes as opposed to my own.

Thanks again for the help I've got it tweaked the way I want it now. This section here: $apps = @() $systemapp = "This is systemapp" function to_yellow ($msg) { "$([char]0x1b)[93m$msg$([char]0x1b)[0m" } function to_green ($msg) { "$([char]0x1b)[32m$msg$([char]0x1b)[0m" } function to_red ($msg) { "$([char]0x1b)[91m$msg$([char]0x1b)[0m" } Looks like some serious business. I have no idea what it means but I appreciate it. I wound up making both the serial number and Winver yellow due to my partial color blindness. We have a part timer helping us do some inventory and Windows version checking so this script is a big help.

Hey TechMonkey when I run that in the PowerShell ISE here is what happened: It went from this: Serial Number : MXLXXXXXXX To this: Serial Number : [32mMXLXXXXXXX[0m And the Windows version went from this: WinVersion : 23H2 to this: WinVersion : [93m23H2[0m and was still white in color. Now here's the weird part. When I actually created a .ps1 file and modified my batch file to match the new name it ran exactly as I wanted it to. Do you know why that is? At first I thought it didn't work until I actually saved it as a .ps1 file and ran it. I even had the PowerShell ISE running in Administrator mode. Thanks again for all the help. I'm trying to learn this stuff while at the same time creating a new image and removing old projectors from classrooms....

Thanks for the reply Davit, I'm afraid I don't know where to put that line in the script. Unfortunately I didn't write this script; I don't understand how PS scripts work. I had looked into the Write-Host functionality but don't know exactly which section to put it into or how to work the syntax. I haven't really used any AI tools yet, they keep me pretty busy just with hardware around here. Here is the output of the script I listed: ComputerName : Computer Manufacturer : HP Model : HP Z2 Tower G5 Workstation Product ID : 2X3M2UT#ABA Serial Number : MXLXXXXXXX Username : K12\user.name IP Address : 10.10.80.12 DNS : {10.10.40.210, 10.10.72.210} Gateway : {10.10.80.1} MAC Address : C8:5B:CC:0C:12:3D Network Card : Intel® Ethernet Connection (11) I219-LM OS Name : Microsoft Windows 11 Pro OSBit : 64-bit WinVersion : 23H2 Build Version : 10.0.22631 Chrome Version : 131.0.6778.205 LastBoot : 12/22/2024 3:19:48 AM Memory(GB) : 15.78 DiskSize(c:) : 476 FreeSpace(GB) : 154 UsedSpace(GB) : 322 PercentFree : 32% CPU : Intel® Core™ i7-10700 CPU @ 2.90GHz I would like the serial number to be green and the WinVersion to be yellow. Sorry I'm so clueless, I'm sort of taking this on as a side project. We've had a lot of turnover the past few years and there is only one person left that even remotely understands this stuff. The rest of us are trying to take on a little extra, but it's not easy to do so and keep up with our existing workloads. So when I look at this script I see this line: 'Serial Number' = $Bios.SerialNumber Is this generating the serial number output or is it just a variable? I tried working with Write-Host and -Foregroundcolor in this area but couldn't figure it out.

We also re-image workstations from time to time because a lot of them use SMART Notebook software and it doesn't always like to upgrade properly. When booting with a Clonezilla USB drive it takes about five minutes to pull the image over the network. With modern SSDs it takes about five or ten minutes to boot up, then another minute or so to join it to the Domain. GP handles them from there.

Thanks for the help TM! I've looked at the options but as I said I know nothing about PowerShell scripting and how the syntaxes are used. What I would like to do with this script is change the color of the serial number and Windows version number to green and yellow respectively. Here is the script: Function Get-Compinfo { [CmdletBinding()] Param( #Want to support multiple computers [Parameter (ValueFromPipeline=$true, ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true)] [Alias("HostName","CN")] [string[]]$ComputerName= (Read-Host 'Enter Computername or Ip Address'), #Switch to turn on Error logging [switch]$ErrorLog, [string]$LogFile = 'D:\Documents\Powershell\errorlog.txt' ) Begin{} Process { #$Computers = Get-Content D:\Documents\Powershell\computers.txt ForEach ($Client in $ComputerName) { if (Test-Connection -Computername $client -BufferSize 16 -Count 1 -Quiet) { $System =Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_ComputerSystem -ComputerName $Client $Bios =Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Bios -ComputerName $Client $os =Get-Wmiobject -ComputerName $Client -Class Win32_OperatingSystem $Disk =Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $Client -class Win32_LogicalDisk -filter "DeviceID='c:'" $IP =Get-WmiObject win32_networkadapterconfiguration -filter "ipenabled = 'True'" -ComputerName $Client $CPU =Get-WmiObject win32_processor -Computername $Client $Chrome =Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $Client -Class CIM_DataFile -Filter "Name='C:\\Program Files\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe'" $SystemSKUNumber =Get-WmiObject Win32_BIOS | Select-Object SystemSKUNumber $WinVer = Invoke-Command -ComputerName $Client -ScriptBlock { (Get-Item -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion').GetValue("DisplayVersion") } [PSCustomObject]@{ 'ComputerName' = $System.Name 'Manufacturer' = $System.Manufacturer 'Model' = $System.Model 'Product ID' = $System.SystemSKUNumber 'Serial Number' = $Bios.SerialNumber 'Username' = $System.Username 'IP Address' = $IP.ipaddress[0] #'0' tells it to only get the IPV4 address# 'DNS' = $IP.DNSServerSearchOrder 'Gateway' = $IP.DefaultIPGateway 'MAC Address' = $IP.macaddress 'Network Card' = $IP.Description 'OS Name' = $os.caption 'OSBit' = $OS.OSArchitecture 'WinVersion' = $Winver 'Build Version' = $os.version 'Chrome Version' = $Chrome.Version 'LastBoot' = [Management.ManagementDateTimeConverter]::ToDateTime( (Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem -Computer $client | Select -Exp LastBootUpTime) ) 'Memory(GB)' = "{0:N2}" -f ($System.Totalphysicalmemory / 1gb) 'DiskSize(c:)' = "{0:N0}" -f ($Disk.Size / 1gb) 'FreeSpace(GB)' = "{0:N0}" -f ($Disk.Freespace / 1gb) 'UsedSpace(GB)' = "{0:N0}" -f ($Disk.size/1gb - $disk.FreeSpace/1gb) 'PercentFree' = "{0:P0}" -f ($Disk.Freespace / $Disk.Size) 'CPU' = $CPU.name }#End pscustomobject block #$Obj=New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property $Prop #Write-Output $Obj }#End If block Else {[PSCustomObject]@{ ComputerName = $Client Manufacturer = "Not online" } #End pscustomobject block } #End Else } #End Foreach loop }#End Process End {} } #End Function}#End Process Get-Compinfo Thanks a bunch for your time! Edit: Just realized it created a smiley in the Disk size line and disabled the smiley option under the options menu.

Howdy all, On occasion I run a short PowerShell script one of my coworkers created for us to extract info from our workstations for inventory and maintenance help. I don't know much at all about PowerShell (trying to learn but just starting) but wondered if I pasted the contents of it here y'all could help me change the color of just two or three of the outputs. Would that be OK? Thanks

As I mentioned before I am sort of a cave man when it comes to the I.T. world, but I thought I'd throw in what we do in case it helps anyone. I just build a basic image and Sysprep it. Then I use Clonezilla to back up that model specific image to one of our servers or in the case of some of our roaming staff that are less familiar with the process a portable hard drive. We then just boot up with a Clonezilla flash drive and copy the image to the machine. Once it boots up and joins the Domain Group Policy will handle it from there. We are looking to get into Intune in the future possibly but as I said we are pretty understaffed, underfunded, and way behind the times.

We haven't gone to it at work yet but when my home computer asked to install the 24H2 update it did the same thing. When I looked in the Device Manager I saw that for some reason the NIC was just disabled. I re-enabled it and so far have not had any more issues. Have you looked at the Device Manager to see if the adapters were disabled or are they just dumping the device drivers? Edit: Apparently this is a well documented issue. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/problem-in-network-windows-11-24h2/ac1e20e5-091a-45ab-a3c7-94ca7b31577d

Thanks for the prompt reply ZH. That first link is sort of what I was hoping for but is related to the pinned items on the TaskBar, which seems to be easier to do locally (not with Intune) than the actual Start Menu itself. We actually clear off the taskbar completely now with GP since we have redirected Desktop shortcuts. I appreciate everyone's time. I'm picking up little pieces here and there that if nothing else gives me a better understanding of what is going on.

Thanks for the tip. I just checked and there is no additional CPU, memory, or network activity, the cursor is just spinning in a circle for several minutes. I have verified this on several of our file servers.

Howdy all, I've been meaning to research this for a while now but kept forgetting. This past summer we started migrating our schools (file servers) from Server 2019 to brand new servers with 2022 on them. I immediately noticed that now on the new servers when I have to look for a user session under computer management it just hangs for several seconds before it even starts listing the sessions. If I try to scroll down it hangs for several more seconds. If I try to change the sorting from User to Computer it will freeze for about five minutes. The older servers were much slower hardware wise but did not have this problem (they were running Server 2019). Has anyone seen this and dealt with it yet? I have verified this activity with several different servers. It's really frustrating.

We've always run some sort of RAID and it's saved us a lot of downtime. If a disk fails we can replace it without taking anything down. As others have mentioned backups are an important as well. We've always used RAID and off site as well as on site backups. Shadow copies on our file servers have saved me TONS of time over the years restoring user's files. To keep disk activity from getting too sporty I set the shadow copy intervals to just two or three times a week. On our AD servers it's usually RAID 5 with the spinning disk models. We have six AD servers so we haven't felt the need to go more robust than that. On our file servers lately it's been the OS on a mirrored SSD RAID 1 array and RAID 6 on the spinning disks.

Folks that is some very good info. I've made a few notes. Hopefully I won't need them though. We don't give ANYONE admin rights on anything unless they work for the I.T. department. Might be overkill but it's worked well so far.

Howdy all, As I had mentioned before I am looking at ways to locally enforce either a blank start menu on our Windows 11 Education clients like we have with Windows 10 or redirect one somehow. The main thing holding us back is the pinned items. We have the Microsoft Store disabled in our GPO but of course Windows 11 is just ignoring that setting. Another pin that would cause us no end of grief is the Outlook (new) and Microsoft 365 (Office). Like a lot of U.S. school systems we have sold our soul to Google and MUST use the Chrome browser and Gmail. No exceptions (even our filtering system requires Chrome). The settings gear is OK to leave because it at least won't open up due to the GPO. As I had mentioned before we have a very small staff with no outside help we can contact. We don't even have a community college in our county we could bounce things off off so to speak. I want to kick things off with 24H2 so we don't have to worry about a major update in the near future. What we really need is the ability to lock these few remaining pins out locally, but I want to be able to remove the entire pinned section if possible. Even if we had the money to get rolling with Microsoft's "Intune" online management system (which we don't) we really don't have the spare staff to assign to the task. I was wondering if any of y'all knew of any links you would be willing to share of sites that deal with this sort of thing. Funny thing is I tracked down a post at the Microsoft Learn College dealing with redirecting the Start Menu of Windows 11 and the Microsoft employee listed the procedure for Windows 10 which does not work with Windows 11. I realize that Microsoft is currently being run by children that were never spanked but I was hoping someone might know an adult that was still in the room. Thanks for any and all replies.

I'd love to find a simple way that isn't too much of a "hack" to just have a blank start menu. We have that with our Windows 10 clients now and it works great (redirected Desktops for shortcut configs).

From what I understand copying the Start2.bin file no longer works with the recent 24H2 update. I tested it myself and sure enough no go. I am still searching for a way to remove the "pinned" section from our user's Start Menus. Shoot, we would be perfectly happy with blank start menus. Our user's Desktops are redirected to the file servers so we have no need for the Start Menu other than the power and log off functions.

We use HP devices in my district as well. I have had similar issues with different device drivers depending on where I got them from. We used to have this exact problem when Windows would install generic drivers. It seemed that those drivers didn't recognize the electrical switch when headphones were plugged in. As a test maybe power the computer off completely and leave the speakers plugged in, then power it on again. If it plays that way then a simple driver swap may get you going. There are three or four different places we have had to get drivers from that come to mind. One is by using the HP Image Assistant. Run that and tell it do download and install the drivers. Another option is to identify the audio chipset in the device manager (probably Realtek) and download the generic drivers from them. Another option is just allowing Windows Update to download and install them. Also in reading your post I am getting the impression that you upgraded from an older version of Windows 11. I have seen problems over the years like this when doing an in place upgrade. Maybe pick another identical PC from a lab or classroom and wipe the hard drive and do a clean installation of 24H2 and just let Windows Update install the drivers. If it works that way then hopefully a fresh Sysprepped image might get you going in January.

Howdy all, I'm a low level tech in the Southern US. Started tinkering with PCs in the early eighties but trained and worked as an electronics tech for a few years before getting back into PCs at about the DOS 6 time frame. I mainly work with hardware and wiring in a small, out of the way, poor school system. The administration won't hire any really qualified IT staff because they consider them a threat, so things get kind of sporty around here. I usually let the guys in the office handle the real technical stuff but due to some staff "changes" some of that type of thing is now dropping in my lap. Lately I've been thinking of Lewis Grizzard's childhood dream of opening up a liquor store...