CHiLL

We've been using Cloudflare's free solution as our DNS record host since migrating away from our council's hosting many years ago. E4Education are the actual designers/hosts for our website though.

Socks are MIA is seems, we haven't had a delivery either.

The Education version of Windows is just a slightly modified Enterprise version. I suspect that you have removed the Windows Store from your image using one of those tools that removes bloatware/unnecessary apps, which would explain why you can't install an AppX package. If you have removed the Windows Store, I'd advise leaving it in and then restricting access to it via AppLocker, then you can still deploy Store apps via SCCM, etc. Some AppX packages also require other AppX packages as dependancies, so they'd need installing first, but you'd have to get clarification of that from the developer.

It does appear that this works for the shortcut path. We've just pushed out the new version of Teams this morning after some testing...so far so good.

You've pretty much got it; the monitor effectively becomes a dock with a one cable solution to connect the laptop, providing power, display, ethernet, USB connectivity, etc (assuming the monitor and also laptop supports the necessary requirements).

I did and unfortunately it didn't resolve the issue*. I currently have a case open with Microsoft and they're looking into it. *The GPO for this (which is actually a GPP setting that looks like a GP setting) actually broke our group policy processing. I noticed that newly imaged devices via SCCM were not communicating with SCCM and picking up the PKI certificate. As it turns out, gpupdate was failing with a "client side error" or something along those line, which meant that the policy to automatically install certificates wasn't applying and thus the client didn't have the PKI certificate to talk to SCCM. As soon as I disabled that GP and performed a gpupdate, they all almost immediately picked up the policies, the PKI certificate and communicated with SCCM.

We haven't been made aware of any issues - but could that be because people are aware that it's often slow? Possibly. On another note, Bromcom recently setup status alerts for their service, which are sent from [email protected]. These emails are quite frequent, specifically regarding the website monitor going offline and then being resolved. Funny thing is, you look at their own status page and it's 100% uptime! Hmm.

Out of curiosity, which keys are you deleting? The SID entries? Would you mind sharing the startup script? I'm just wondering if I can do it via GPP, rather than a script.

If you have Microsoft licensing, such as EES or OVS-ES, I wonder if it would be easier to raise this with Microsoft directly, through their M365 support portal in your admin centre? That sort of support issue should be covered by your licensing model and at least it would be dealt with by Microsoft themselves, than you trying to quickly bodge a solution that may not be the best long term.

The default iOS apps cannot be uninstalled/prevented from being installed. You can't block them, but as @atcoates mentioned, you can hide them, using a different setting in the MDM. You need to specify the AppID when hiding apps. Here's a snippet of some of our hidden apps, though we're using Intune, not Meraki. [ATTACH=CONFIG]70184[/ATTACH]

I didn't know this was a thing in Wales, is this across all LEA/maintained schools in Wales? I presume it differs from what it's like here under an English LEA? We are still a maintained school in Birmingham, though the LEA have absolutely no input on how we scope our setup, since we moved away from their services in 2015.

Yeah, this is exactly what we had. I have contacted our reseller regarding the link @midweek provided, I'm just waiting for a reply.

That seems to be relating to licensing specifically, whereas I couldn't even open a file offline. Maybe they're related, I'm not sure, I'd have to look into it further.

Ah yeah, that's the jist of what the Spiceworks thread was saying. I've now applied that and it seems to be working. It just seems counterintuitive, why should I have it listed as available when I've already pushed it for a forced install? Either way, thanks though!

We encountered an issue earlier, where we copied a PowerPoint onto a laptop's C:\ drive, as it's potentially being used somewhere with no Wi-Fi. To test it would work, we put the laptop into flight mode and attempted to open the PowerPoint. However, it said that it couldn't be opened (I don't have the exact error message atm). Though when we disabled flight mode, it worked immediately. Close it and turn on flight mode - it won't open again. Has anyone else experienced this behaviour?

I'm looking at getting the company portal working to make it easier to monitor and install apps manually, though I can't seem to get the apps to appear in the list of available apps. We deploy apps (such as Microsoft 365 Apps for Windows 10 and later) as required installs to a device group that contains all DFE laptops, with the "Show this as a featured app in the Company Portal" set as "Yes". The install of apps is completely invisble, unless you monitor Task Manager and know what to look for. Once apps are installed, they are showing up in Company Portal in the Downloads & Apps section. However, I'd like to see the Featured Apps section, or in the Apps section. We do have the Company Portal configured to show featured apps at our tenant level. A Spiceworks thread suggests that you need to push the app to a users group, rather than a device group in order to achieve this, though that doesn't seem to work for me either. Does anyone know how I can achieve this?

Best practise would state that you should only deploy the versions you need, though that often doesn't happen in the real world. Not all VC++ Redistributables supercede each other. We are deploying: 2005 SP1 x86 2005 SP1 x64 2008 SP1 x86 2008 SP1 x64 2010 SP1 x86 2010 SP1 x64 2012 x86 2012 x64 2013 x86 2013 x64 2015 - 2022 x86 2015 - 2022 x64 It is annoying that on x64 machines, you also need the x86 version for 32-bit apps using VC running on 64-bit systems. As for .NET, I believe the major versions supersede each other. We no longer deploy 3.5 unless it's required by a specific app (which we have linked as a dependant application in SCCM, which installs it automatically if specified in the other app deployment). I think 4.8 has been included in Windows since Windows 10 and it also superseded 4.5, though I could be wrong.

We use NetSupport Notify, which can send popup notifications to clients who have the agent installed. You can also give access to specific people to be able to send messages and install the console on their workstations. While not perfect, it does the job for us...though we only have it deployed to <200 workstations, which are all on the same physical site and network.

After looking into this again, it looks like the apps were removed, though the place-holders in the start menu weren't. For example, I was able to run the following command: Get-AppxPackage –Name *mcaf* | Remove-AppxPackage Normally, if the app was fully installed, that command wouldn't work. because McAfee is a security product, they'd restricted the ability to remove it. Looking at the other apps in the start menu, like Netflix, Booking.com, etc...I was able to right click them and press Uninstall. This is why I think they were just place holders instead of full apps. So maybe the -cleanpc switch did remove it after all. Sometimes I really dislike how obtuse Microsoft and/or OEMs make it to remove stuff, especially if you're managing the device with Intune.

I have seen this and other variations in the past, though I don't want to do anything other than remove the non-Microsoft apps built in.

I am revisiting some Intune laptops that have pre-installed bloatware on them, such as McAfee, ExpressVPN, etc. We were able to remove these previously by running the following command: factoryreset -cleanpc This showed a list of apps that it would remove during the factory reset, performed the reset and it worked. However, I've just come to do this again, it showed me the list of apps that it would remove, including McAffee, ExpressVPN, etc...but when it came back after the reset, the apps were still installed and working. When I run the same command again, it doesn't show those apps in the list of apps to remove anymore. Now I don't know how to remove them without reimaging the laptop via a clean USB installer. Does anyone know the best/correct way to remove those apps?

We've liked our BenQ screens, though we've found a couple of niggles/issues with them thus far: - One TV (RE7503) will randomly lose the HDMI audio, even though it's still displaying through the same cable (disconnecting and reconnecting the cable will resolve the issue) - If you're using VGA as an input source, but the TV is currently on another input mode - the VGA input doesn't highlight automatically to show an active input in the input selection menu, unlike HDMI - One TV (RM7503) got stuck and I couldn't restart it. Green power button was lit, but panel was off. The physical buttons on the TV and the remote were not responding. Turning the power off on the wall didn't cause the green light to turn off, even after 30 seconds. Due to a class being in the room at the time, I turned it back on at the wall and the TV came back to life. This was a one time only thing, so I'm hoping it doesn't happen again.

You'll want to create something like "uninstall.xml" in the root of your Office 2021 installation folder and the XML file should contain: Then you'll want to run a script that runs: \\server\share$\Office2021\setup.exe /configure \\server\share$\Office2021\uninstall.xml You can then add your own checks or wait in the script, and then run the installer for M365. Edit: Just realised you said about checking the version - I'm not sure about that and I may have to come back about that. If you use PowerShell, you could probably get it to check the file version number and only act if it's below a certain value.

I haven't heard of them, but they seem to at least have been around a while, since 2006. Reviews seem decent and spread across time (though I don't always trust online reviews). I used to work on that industrial estate. Fun fact, that's the same estate where Kenable are based.

Blocking by MAC addresses is more difficult these days with the rise of privatised/randomised MAC addresses, meaning a device can appear in DHCP with a different MAC address. You might just be best changing the password, despite the short term pain it would cause.