this_is_gav

Hey guys, we've recently starting deploying Windows 10 and all seems rosy on the kids laptops. I deployed the first staff laptop (same image) last week but I'm having a problem with printing offline when a staff member queues up work from home. The printers (isn't printer dependant) are deployed from a 2008 R2 server from the user Preferences section of Group Policy (and disabling Point and Print and enabling Loopback Processing mode in the Computer Configuration admin section) and has been faultless on Windows 7 (the same GPO) and those on Windows 10 on pupils laptops (who are only ever onsite), but the problem comes when a staff member takes his laptop home and attempts to print to one of the offline printers. On Windows 7 it was perfectly happy queuing up print jobs and firing them off when the laptop connected back up. The printer is listed as "server offline", so no surprise there, but it won't let them queue up a job, only returning a "Windows can't print due to a problem with the printer setup" message. Like I say it doesn't matter which printer (we use Konica Minolta and Ricoh) is selected. My usual Google skills are letting me down and I can't even even find a reference to the error message. Has anyone got any ideas please? I've put this in the Windows 10 section as it seems unique to Windows 10, but of course feel free to move it if there's a more relevant section.

It seems the script here works fine at the moment: Removing built-in Apps from Windows 10 using Powershell - CCMEXEC.COM – System Center blog - but it only works after an image has been syspreped - trying to run it before resulted in the familiar instant sysprep failure, advising to check the log. The few remaining apps can easily be blocked with AppLocker. I've deployed a couple of laptops and asked those kids to see if they can break them.

I've got Applocker blocking everything fine. Make sure you've also got an allow rule for everything too, as in the below attachment... no, I don't know why either... but it does block the apps in the list. I've got a different problem. I've got the start tiles layout working as I want, I've got the start menu opening fine (left and right-click), sysprep working as I want, but no matter how I do it, the removal of apps doesn't fully work and they remain in the All apps section of the start menu. If I do it before sysprep (using Get-AppxPackage -allusers *3dbuilder** | Remove-AppxPackage and so on) they reappear after sysprep. If I leave it until after sysprep then it runs the script without errors, but the apps remain. If I target it at created users (just to test, as it wouldn't be feasible to do it after each user is created of course) using Get-AppxPackage -user username *3dbuilder** | Remove-AppxPackage then I get an error that the package wasn't found. I don't want to remove all the apps (Get-AppxPackage -allusers | Remove-AppxPackage) as I want to retain the photos app as the default for viewing pictures (though this command seems to work - edit: that doesn't work for new users ). All I want to do is tidy up the start menu. I know Microsoft are desperately trying to promote their app store, but how can they expect Windows 10 to get any traction from education and businesses when it's near-impossible for businesses to deploy the OS they want, an OS that is 99% fine.

A further update on V2 of the software. We've had an about turn! The iPad app is much, much improved and has been rock solid stable since build 30 was released (though some obviously had issues as we received build 31 yesterday). There have been issues with the swivel base and the remote - as well as the one above (remote not triggering a recording and ultimately us losing a lesson's work), yesterday it wouldn't stop a recording. Thankfully this time the 'stop' button was in place on the app so we were able to finish the recording on the screen and it uploaded and is presumably working fine on the website. Our contact at IRIS thinks it might be an intermittent Bluetooth fault, and if it happens again he's suggesting they will swap out our swivel base for a new one, though he didn't commit to that. Our issue this week has been with the Lightspeed filter (run by the County Council) blocking "random" IP addresses which turned out to be used by Amazon AWS. It seems the video player itself is calling these servers, and it's not as simple as just adding an exception as these IP addresses are changed on a monthly basis, we're told. If we were to have a permanent fix for this, it would need County opening up the "unknown" category for our school, leaving us open to all sorts of potential incidents from little known sites across the globe, many of which by their very status are likely to be of a dubious nature, something we (and County) are unwilling to risk. Thankfully today this cleared up, and videos are working fine, with my contact at the Council suggesting Lightspeed was learning these IPs and automatically assigning them to a category which is open for our school. If this does indeed happen on a monthly basis and we've got a day or 2 of being unable to access reflections, then I'm sure we can cope with that, being a small school. What felt like a deal breaker yesterday has turned into a hope that we can continue using the service. Given the hectic schedule of the run-up to Christmas I doubt we'll be using them again before January, so hopefully new glitches aren't uncovered somewhere down the line when we do come to use them! I count we're up to 78 email messages back and forth between myself, IRIS and County regarding the various issues encountered so far plus a good few phone calls. And however many our guy dealing with the contractual side of things has had (trying to get things going from a different angle).

We are on version 2. We only started in September and never saw version 1, so I was asking if V1 was more stable than V2. I've just had a phone conversation with one of their tech support guys. Apparently there is a memory leak in the previous version (V2 B29) which they have/are working to fix, which should lead to more stability in the new version (V2 B30). Interestingly we've only had crashes with the primary iPad, but hopefully this helps. We received the new update earlier, and it's a good one. It gives much more information, especially regarding issues in uploads and queues (Lightspeed filter here, which causes issues on iPads obviously), so in our case it stated that the 2nd recording we made yesterday was ahead of the 1st recording (somehow), but the 2nd wouldn't upload because the video from the primary iPad hadn't been uploaded (because we couldn't stop the recording, so had to crash out of the app, so the 2nd iPad was stuck in a confused loop). Deleting that 2nd video allowed the 1st to upload. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and hope the new app solves the major issues we've been suffering from and will update this thread once we've used it a few more times. Our remaining ongoing issue is that there appears to be a block somewhere down the line on the streaming server by our Northumberland council ISP, which is stopping us from viewing videos in school. All the addresses IRIS Connect give are open, but something is stopping us playing them. I've got IRIS contacting NCC to deal with the issue. I hate Lightspeed (or NCCs managing of it anyway). Not having any speed issues with uploads. They tend to zoom along at a tidy speed (probably as fast as our wifi allows, which is slower than our internet upload speed!).

Sorry for the late reply. We've just used it again for the first time for a few weeks, so I came to update the thread. Aspect ratios displaying completely wrong (so 16:9 videos filling entire screens, irrespective of what aspect ratio the screen is, or the Dual Discovery videos completely filling screens, even though the ratio of the video is what, 32:9 - see the hideously stretched 2nd screenshot above) The one video which is the correct aspect ratio in fullscreen mode places the video in the upper-left corner of the screen, showing the same size as before hitting the fullscreen button, so it doesn't even stretch beyond the half-way point on my 1920x1200 monitor An instance of only the video from 1 of the iPad uploading, but acting as though the videos from both were there, so it was hideously stretched The app on the primary, controlling iPad crashing mid-record, so videos didn't upload at all My favourite - as in the screenshot above, one of the 2 videos being encoded upside down (on the reflection created by their own training guy when he came in after we'd purchased the kit) - again, see screenshot above Just now I've had to take it out of a lesson because the remote wouldn't trigger a recording, then when we set it off manually on the iPad, the recording had no way of stopping other than force closing the app, losing that recording Some bog standard videos are not being supported in manual upload (uploaded a ripped Youtube video in MP4 and FLV format to test, but the FLV didn't work, though they do accept FLV videos (their test file is an FLV, and is actually the only video which has worked flawlessly). Not the biggest issue as you can just reencode the video into another container and try again. To be honest, this is looking like the only way in which we're going to be able to use the software, so might as well take it in house). Our most successful day had 3 out of 4 recordings working fine (other than the fullscreen aspect ratio). The fourth the app crashed mid-record and we ended up with no recording from either iPad. That was our best day. They've got an update coming out apparently this or next week, but my contact said it was only to address the upside-down video issue. I wouldn't care too much about the aspect ratio, as you can view most of them fine it outside of fullscreen mode, but what worries me is that they're using a very common and popular Flash player (the premium version of JW Player), so these issues shouldn't exist. Once they've encoded the video, it should play fine on any screen, in any browser (which has Flash). That functionality is built into JW Player by default, so I suspect the issue isn't the playback of the videos, but their encoding of them. It's taken them a month (and counting) to apparently fix the upside down issue, so how long is it going to take to fix these other issues?

If it's definitely a software issue, then copy the documents off it (remove any .exe files included), reinstall Windows from scratch, copy documents back on to it. Make sure you know the serial numbers for any software (Windows, Office, etc) before you wipe it. Sometimes it's just quicker to reinstall Windows than it is to try and fix a software glitch, especially when malware is involved.

To be fair only one of our uploads hasn't been autorotated. They claim it's a "rare" bug that's going to be fixed in an upcoming update, so if that's the case then fair enough. After more than 2 weeks and 27 messages back and forth about the various issues with the uploads I've finally been escalated to an QA engineer to investigate the "multitude of issues" we are experiencing. We'll see.

Bump to add our experiences. We've recently purchased the Discovery Kit ourselves, and even on the reflection recorded by the training guy one of the videos was upside down. The iPad/Pod itself rotated correctly (indeed the included mic cable will only reach if the iDevice is orientated one way) yet one half of the processed video is upside down. In fullscreen mode the videos are horribly stretched vertically rather than being letterboxed as they should be. See the attachments below (I've pixelated faces and names). The second recording we tried uploaded from both iPads/Pods (I watched them) yet only one video is shown on the website, yet it's stretched as though both videos are meant to be there (so everyone involved is twice as fat)... Even standard MP4 videos we've uploaded to test the system aren't shown at the correct aspect ratio when fullscreen, stretched to 1920x1200 (16:10) rather than being letterboxed to 1920x1080 (16:9) as they originally were. The reason being that teachers and assessors would rather see the smaller video so they can add comments - I think it should be down to the member of staff in question how they wish to view their lesson rather than have IRIS decent for them... JWPlayer is perfectly capable of playing videos at the correct aspect ratio. One of the test videos showed correctly in Firefox, but only one of them, and of course Firefox is useless in many schools due to the lack of decent enforceable settings through GPOs. This is across different systems (32-bit and 64-bit), with different graphics cards (Intel, AMD and my Nvidia card at home) using IE11, Chrome and Firefox with differing versions of Flash (laptops at work still have Flash 11 deployed to IE and Chrome updates Flash itself). I'm impressed with the front-end of the system, the sharing, comments and so on, but the actual processing or viewing of videos is horribly bugged so far in our experience (we were added straight to the Connect v2 system, so I've no idea if Connect v1 was any better). So far, the only video out of the 7 we've tried which has worked flawlessly is the FLV file they give you to test...

Hi, we've rolled out Windows 7 on the network, but there's a surprising number of computers coming to me which are in the process of rolling back to a previous restore point. Given that these are all different laptops which to my knowledge haven't previously or since shown any stability issues, what could be causing them? It's happened on both laptops and desktops and across a variety of hardware. Given that each rollback is taking up a good chunk of a lesson (~15 minutes plus) this is obviously rather inconvenient to those affected. Event Viewer seems to be next to useless "unspecified changes to system configuration might have caused the problem" and "repaired to the corrupted files from backup". We've only ~120 computers in school, Win7 has only been rolled out in the last few weeks - why have I seen some 10 computers being repaired? Any ideas? :\

No, first thing I checked was the local admin group (obviously have staff as local admins, but students only on netbooks they took home years ago).

I don't mind kids having access to the command prompt - indeed, in one sense I prefer it, as I can go into a class and just run gpupdate quickly if needs be (we had the "wait for network on boot" (or setting to that effect) disabled, so sometimes it took 2 reboots for computer settings to take effect). So long as they have no control they shouldn't have, I don't mind leaving the command prompt available, but I'll disable it for now, see if there's any ill-effects and see if I can enable UAC through Group Policy.

Hi Garacesh, I've edited my post since you replied. Do you know if disabling UAC allow programs to run elevated without entering credentials? When I'm setting up a computer for someone outside of school, I'd always enable UAC, but we had lots of problems with UAC on Vista in school, so I've always disabled it for network computers.

Well... it turns out the pupil in question was able to shut down his own laptop (not a shock), but not other laptops (as I said, it was denying me trying to shut down others when logging on as a dummy user). Normally I'd thoroughly test something, but yesterday was rather fraught for several reasons, this landed on me in the last lesson, and by the time I came to test, the pupil had left for the day, so I couldn't log in as him (I could have changed his password of course, though that would have been a touch drastic considering I had theoretically identical dummy users I could use). Obviously with such an issue I wanted it sorted before the start of play today, as if a vulnerability had existed, it may have spread like wildfire through the school and caused chaos. Will probably look into enabling UAC through GPO (if you can) if it gives users more feedback on why something is denied. I'm slightly surprised it doesn't fall back to the XP method if UAC is disabled though. Does 7 still ask for admin privileges if you "run as administrator" with UAC disabled? Anyway, that's a relief. Today is a better day! Thanks again guys.

Deepening the plot, I'm trying another laptop (from an identical W7 image) with a cloned user account and while it allows me to run the command prompted elevated (I say that, but there's nothing indicating it is actually elevated - Win8 tells you prompts are elevated, not sure about 7), it gives me "access denied" when running the shutdown GUI. Yes, UAC is turned off. I wouldn't have thought it would allow some admin aspects to run while others are blocked though? Yes, though I've never blocked access to the Windows folder, so they could just launch it from there too. We've never had issues like these before (to be fair, the kid in question wasn't being malicious and showed his teacher and myself while having a bit of a chuckle), so I've never had the need to lock computers down excessively... but then they've never been able to open a program as an administrator either... :\

Hi, got a bit of a pickle and I'm lost. Kids are able to right-click on cmd.exe and simply "run as administrator". No box for entering credentials, it just opens an elevated command prompt, allowing them run things such as shutdown.exe (which of course does allow them to remotely shutdown other computers). Obviously this is an issue, and I'd assumed I'd accidently given them an admin role or something, but nope - things such as Device Manager gives the message that kids are "standard users" and won't be able to make changes. Have I missed something obvious (it is that sort of day)? Help would be very much appreciated!

Trying to redirect for each user, especially staff.

Thanks for replying You can redirect the cache separately (so keep the cache local, but keep the profile in the networked home folder), but even after a few minutes the user data folder was over 10mb with 500 files, and lord knows what size it could eventually stretch to. Anyway, multiply that many times and it becomes an issue, especially if an opened Chrome is constantly accessing that data (our wireless is over-saturated as it is).

Hi all, I'm in the process of deploying Google Chrome, and it's mostly working well (though the impossibility of redirecting bookmarks is a pain—anyone got a solution for that one?). I think there's just one thing—I want custom shortcuts (apps) on the new tab page pointing to intranets and websites. Either my Google skills are failing or this isn't possible. Surely I can't be the only one who wants to highlight custom sites using Chrome?

I remember the old Pages software (that is still used very infrequently here!) either came with SassoonPrimary or was recommended to use with SassoonPrimary—I can't remember which.

Thanks for replying. I've added them to both the files in question and the GPO object itself security tab of the GPO itself. No change.

Hi, I'm lost now. I'm just starting to roll out Windows 7 onto our network, but I can't get software (MSIs of Flash, Adobe Reader) to install via a GPO. The same GPOs posted to Windows XP organisational units are installing fine, but on the Windows 7 OUs it's coming back with a 1612 error (apparently that the server path is inaccessible). The path is correct (\\servername\softw\server\msi\adobereader11\acroread.msi), the laptop can see it when typed in manually, the software itself installs fine if I run the MSI myself... it just refuses to install via the GPO. I've tried adding the "Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon" GPO to ensure that the network is up before the software GPO comes into effect, but I don't know if that's working or not. Any ideas? I'm at a bit of a loss now. The GPResult output: gpresult2foredugeek.html PS, not sure if this shouldn't be in the Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2 section, so apologies if another area if more relevant.

A little late, but I thought I'd post anyway. Somewhat randomly, PC 5.1.3.0 crashed Publisher 2007 on startup on every single laptop, yet there have been only an isolated case or two of PC 5.1.4.1 crashing Publisher 2007. So yes, Publisher 2007 is affected (at least on XP), but in our case, less so than 5.1.3.0.

I'm rather confused at the moment. Yesterday I saw a weird issue. An old Smartboard (500 series, with serial-USB converter), where the teacher complained the Smartboard wasn't working until she set it up each time with her laptop. I didn't understand what she meant, but when connected the light on the board flashed green, then turned red. I tried running through a few things, then got bored, uninstalled the drivers and downloaded newer drivers (the previous 10.8 version, as the 10 series was working earlier, and I wanted to keep uniform versions around the school). The drivers appeared to install fine, the board connects fine, you can orient it, the pens and eraser work perfectly inside Notebook or on an ink layer, yet you can't control the cursor with the Smartboard... well, not unless you click the right-click button, in which case the cursor follows and, say, drags a selection box around the desktop. I've checked in the diagnostics program and the clicks and drags were logged fine, and showed up in the trace, and it was set to projected mode (though I tried non-projected too). Is there an option somewhere that I'm missing to disable cursor control? The board itself appears fine, was working before the holidays, and was apparently working up until the I reinstalled the drivers.

Because SIMS is provided by our LEA and they lock down and isolate their admin servers to levels I'd never even consider on the curriculum side. I'm sure they'd set up a bridge of some description, but I think staff would want to use a system as similar to what they're used to as they can (ideally Excel would have been the front-end for a database, both for adding data and manipulating it). I've got access to SIMS personally, so I might have a play and see if it really is that flexible and see if it's worth looking into getting curriculum access to SIMS and pushing staff in that direction. @Sivadam, I did consider the MIS forum, but given that I wasn't wanting to use a SIMS-like approach, I felt a more general forum would be better suited, which was a bit silly. I guess if anything the coding section would have been better for what I was initially wanting. Many thanks for your help so far.