Duke5A

I've used it for years in a school environment with near 2,000 clients. MS tells you not to use it because it cuts against them moving to Windows as a service. Just know going in you're not going to have the MS Store and the other bits that go along with it. Pick one for your environment and stick with it. Pros and cons to each path. For us the pros far outweighed the cons in favor of LTSB. As far as sticky notes are concerned, you can grab it from a Windows 10 LTSB 2015 ISO. This is right before they ported it to Modern App. It's built into my LTSC 2019 image.

Another vote for using snapshots in a VM - it's how I maintain my image. As far as capturing is concerned I just do it at the command line through WinPE that boot over PXE. Use DISM to capture the image. No issues with LTSC.

Are all your devices in the environment UEFI booting? If not, then the ones still doing BIOS boot might not function after that change. Using DHCP on a Windows server you can setup profiles that hand out the options based on certain criteria. The DHCP address request packet from the client will actually identify the architecture. I've got three profiles setup on mine: one for UEFI x86, a second for UEFI x64 and the last for legacy BIOS booting.

This is kind of funny as this just happened to me. Win 10 1607 LTSB. I went to replace the keyboard on my workstation and couldn't get three keyboards to be detected. Mouse worked fine. Rebooting the machine worked and the keyboard started functioning during post. Haven't had any issues since, but I haven't messed with any other USB peripherals either. Just chalked it up to Windows being stupid.

I'm not familiar with Netsweeper at all, but do you know what method it is trying to use? You can force restricted mode either through altering the HTTP request headers or DNS redirection. I've DNS redirection working in my environment on a Debian VM running Bind.

Classrooms in LAN School are separated by a 'channel ID' that is designated at install on the both the clients and teacher console. As long as they're all on the same subnet no other configuration is needed to make them work. The teacher console only allows the setting of the channel ID on install unless a separate utility that is included with the software is ran that unlocks the ability to change said ID. If your clients are domain joined then I would highly recommend configuring LAN School via GPO. I used their included GPO templates for the config and push the MSI via AD. Never have to touch the student computers even after reimage.

I can't be much help regarding the licensing for those mini controllers, but for what it's worth I have three 4404 controllers in my environment and the licensing was a one time deal. The only thing that needed to be renewed was the support contract on a yearly basis until the controllers went end of life. I did have a major issue a couple years ago that involved the factory loaded certificates on the access points expiring and the controllers no longer allowing APs to associate. Those certs had an expiration date ten years after device manufacture. Didn't know what was happening until I got a console cable on one of the access points and I could see what it was complaining about. Disabling NTP and rolling back the date on the controllers fixed the issue until I could get updated firmware pushed out.

This is a utility that I wrote in VB .Net 2010 a number of years ago. It's basically a wrapper application for TightVNC that allows me to remotely control client computers in the domain (think Team Viewer). The inspiration for this came from an older application called 'Gen Control' that basically does the exact same thing, but only worked for Windows XP and earlier. As of this writing I can verify that it works on all version of Windows Vista through 10 1809. This is what it does in a nutshell: Writes configuration registry keys to client's registry Copies TightVNC server binary and DLL to client via admin share Registers TightVNC as service on the client Calls the TightVNC viewer on the support technician's computer and connects to client Monitors for closing of TightVNC viewer Unregisters TightVNC server service on client computer Removes registry keys from client Deletes files that were copied over Some security concerns I took into account when writing this: Passwords for the TightVNC session are randomly generated for every connection When the server service is registered on the client the startup mode is set to manual In the event of a loss of connection before the cleanup can begin a script is placed in startup that will perform the cleanup the next time the client is restarted Requirements: Remote Computer Management is enable and the port open via GPO Computer Configuration / Admin Templates / Windows Components / Windows Remote Management (WinRM)/WinRM Service: Allow remote server management through WinRM Remote Registry Service is started and the port open via GPO Computer Configuration / Policies / Windows Settings / Security Settings / System Services: Remote Registry Enabled and set to automatic startup Port 5900 is open to incoming connections on client firewall Secure Attention Sequence needs to be enable via GPO to send CTRL-ALT-DEL to clients via TightVNC Computer Configuration / Admin Templates / Windows Components / Windows Logon Options: Disable or enable software Secure Attention Enabled and limited to services The account being used to run this application from needs to have local admin credentials on clients you're attempting to connect to There are options to to change ports, run ping tests before attempting connections, block user input from the client end, and other things. When opening ports on the client computers through GPO be sure to do it on the domain profile on the firewall config. This way if you're working with laptops then when the device goes offsite those firewall exceptions are closed. Attached to this blog post is the source code and compiled binary. The compiled binary can be found here: .\ZenControl v2\ZenControl\bin\Debug Any questions or comments can be dropped here. I haven't updated this code in quite some time and there might be some bugs, but it is actively used by my department. This handy utility has saved me from having to make plenty of trips to remote buildings in the dead of Winter. I hope this helps someone out there.... ZenControl v2.7z

Had a very similar problem with MFC and department management turned on. https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/ie/en-US/96479b48-ca8f-4248-aa3c-0606054a9597/print-jobs-blocking-the-print-server?forum=winserverprint

Heh, I'd be leery of downloading an operating system off of a Russian FTP.

My production domain controllers have 6GB and 4GB. Each has Radius installed for wireless authentication, Google Password sync, DHCP, and one has Google Apps Directory Sync along with some scheduled tasks for automatic account creation. Both idle around 2.5GB used during operating hours.

I pre-build my images in virtual machines still (old habits die hard) and discovered while building an image out of LTSC 1809 that the method in which I used to get Sticky Notes working in LTSB 1607 has stopped working. The old way involved finding LTSB 2015 media, extracting and moving the following files: StikyNot.exe >> .\Windows\System32 StikyNote.exe.mui >> .\Windows\System32\EN-US The above worked great until a DLL that was relied on was changed in the new Windows release. After messing around I got it to work again and placed it all in it's own folder under 'Program Files' along with the old DLL. StikyNot.exe >> .\Program Files\Sticky Notes\StikyNot.exe StikyNot.exe >> .\Program Files\Sticky Notes\SNTSearch.dll StikyNot.exe >> .\Program Files\Sticky Notes\dui70.dll StikyNot.exe >> .\Program Files\Sticky Notes\en-us\sntsearch.dll.mui StikyNot.exe >> .\Program Files\Sticky Notes\en-us\StikyNot.exe.mui I know there is a classic version out there, but I'm not a fan of using third party software that's not from major developers in my base images.

There is a meme for everything.

OK, so what Java SE 10? And I though MS licensing was hard to understand...

I'm using an old version of The Dude. It's free and only does SNMP polling, but anything that can be monitored via SNMP it'll monitor. I've got it looking after switches, servers, virtual machines and hosts, firewall, battery backups, copy machines, etc... You can create your probes for it and functions for reporting. If the temperature in the data center gets too hot, or even the storage volume on the mail server gets too full it'll send me text messages. Attached is a map of our largest building.

I can name a couple headlines that major news organizations ran with and got horribly wrong here in the States in the last week alone. I don't see how you can trust a plugin or any other tech solution to this - they're all curated lists. Trustworthy news is a goalpost that slides on ideological rails.

What edition do you plan on deploying? It pretty much comes down to LTSB vs Education. If you're using Office 365 then it would make sense to go with Education or any other edition that has the full MS Store functionality and other bits. If you're not on Microsoft's cloud platform and you want something similar to the no hassle way of doing things that was 7, then LTSB is for you. Building an image around LTSB is really no different than how it was done on 7. I still pre-roll mine in a virtual machine, capture using DISM and deploy with WDS. Really only have to open it up for updates every five or six months.

What's a healthy budget and how big of a building are they in?

Control permissions exclusively at the file level Remove 'server\users' from the allowed list as this will let anyone have read access Don't give anyone full control, not even over their own home folders - only give modify permissions as they'll be able to mess with permissions having full Disable permission inheritance at the top level One last bit of advice is to go easy on the number of share names. Don't create a new share for every home folder on the server, but a single top level one. - Top Level Folder (shared here named staff$, disable inheritance) +Teacher A +Teacher B +Teacher C Control the user permissions on the teacher folder level and map by '\\server\staff$\teacher a', etc, etc

We're voting with our wallets and quickly becoming a Google shop (that has its own issues). Every Chromebook we purchase I get to recycle a Windows laptop. Soon I'll be able to put stake through the heart of our hosted Exchange too. Happy days...

Card Readers and Mapped Network Drives - Blogs - EduGeek.net I made a blog post a number of years ago about disabling card readers using devcon. This process can be used with any hardware really. Attached to the post is a zip containing the x64 version of devon. It's a bit old, but I'd wager it still works.

I honestly don't think this one is on the engineers. MS has jumped onto a development cycle that is just plain nuts and leaves no time for quality control - even Server 2019 skipped RTM. Makes me wonder why they felt the need to do this. I understand the whole 'keeping up with the Jones's' line of thinking, but who are they trying to keep up with? Oh, for what its worth, I see this bug on 1607 as well.

Works fine on brand new silicon. I have it deployed to a number of seventh gen CAD computers, couple hundred seventh gen Dell Latitudes and a few eighth gen Dell Latitudes. It won't have support for the latest processor extensions, but honestly, whoopty do... The gains will far outweigh the cons. The only thing that could keep you on the Education release is if you're a Office 365 school, then there are up sides to having the Microsoft Store built in to the operating system. It'll be missing some stuff like a calculator app, sticky notes and some other stuff. Microsoft transitioned that stuff into Modern Apps (leaves a horrible taste in mouth just uttering that) and since LTSB/C doesn't ship with them, they're left out. All you got to do grab the binary files from previous versions of Windows for that stuff and work it into your image - problem solved.

Soooo, the fact that some admins won't buy into an ecosystem that was designed from the ground up to force traditional desktop users into a rent seeking model makes us lazy and adverse to new things? You find it acceptable that a factory load of an Enterprise marketed operating system looks like a Las Vegas slot machine? Most users had a hard enough time navigating the interface before and now it jumps up and down like a jack russell terrier trying to sell you stuff. This is aside from the fact that these bi-yearly updates are essentially compulsory major service pack releases that reinstall all of the garbage you poured days into researching and tweaking the base image that is deployed to hundreds of machines - only to find out that the in place upgrade failed on dozens of machines turning them into bricks. I kind of liked not having to reinvent the wheel with this major testing process, but every once in a while. The fact is that MS went from a snails pace in terms of product development to scene from Spaceballs where they jump to ludicrous speed. I wasn't given any additional staff to help compensate for the extra workload either. I'd be willing to bet that most here are running on a wing and a prayer it terms of support. Sorry for the rant, I know it comes off as bitter. Plenty of legit reasons have been given for a large number of us moving to LTSC. It's a bit offensive to keep reading thinly veiled assertions of our laziness for not drinking the Kool-Aide in light of all we do to further our organization's goals.

@Sheridan I've noticed the same thing here. Windows 10 LTSB 2016, Server 2016 handling print queues and local profiles on clients. This never happened before migrating from VBS to GPP to handle printers. After imaging a lab on first login the printer install can take as long as 30 minutes. This only happens if one of the printers being installed on the client is unreachable on the network (powered off, network cable disconnected). It's either related to the new profile creation on the client computer, or the driver install process. I haven't had time to diagnose this beyond that though. One thing for sure it's never a problem as long as all the printers being installed via GPP are on and ready.