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I am looking at setting up some kiosk workstations for a library. They will be running Windows 8.1 and will be joined to a domain. Normally, they will only have access to Internet Explorer with Adobe Reader plugin. They will also be able to print through a pay-for-print system. Every once in awhile however, the machine will need to have additional software for special times of the year (like MS Office). Instead of installing and uninstalling the software as needed, I would like to include the software in the image, but make it available only when needed. Does anyone know of a mechanism for controlling this? Any tips from someone who has a similar setup?

Maybe try: Download Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit 5.1 from Official Microsoft Download Center or Malwarebytes | Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit - Free Zero-Day Exploit Protection

If you only want them to be able to use Internet Explorer, you can use this method: Assigned access: FAQ - Windows Help We use this for a number of kiosks and it works great. Very reliable. After creating the standard user that you will be using on the system, login once, run desktop IE, and set any settings you need (homepage, etc. can also be done with policy of course, but not necessary if only doing a handful of machines). I would then open the metro version of IE and bring up the charms menu and open settings. From there, you can specify to always show the address bar. This is very handy for the general public. At this point, I would sign out and login as admin and follow the instructions for setting assigned access.

yeah, this is really annoying. It has been putting a shortcut on the desktop and automatically pinning it to the task bar. I wish they wouldn't assume we wanted it pinned. A desktop shortcut is sufficient.

I have setup Hyper-V 2012 R2 onto a Dell R720 server. I downloaded the trial of Multipoint Server 2012 to install as a VM. The host has a VDI-ready GPU (AMD FirePro S7000) that is configured and ready for use. When I went into settings for the Multipoint VM and added the RemoteFX adapter it looked like it was happy, however, once I finished installing everything, I went into Device Manager and noticed that it only had the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. There was an Unknown Device that I assume was the RemoteFX adapter. Even after updating the Integration Services and running Windows Update, I could not get it recognized. I then gave up and decided to test this on another server running Hyper-V 2012 thinking that, perhaps, R2 was the problem since MP Server is only 2012 and was not upgraded to R2 status. I was also not able to get this working. Has anyone managed to get the RemoteFX adapter showing on a Hyper-V hosted Multipoint 2012 Server? Also, while we are discussing Multipoint Server...I have read that there is a 20 concurrent connection maximum per server instance. Is this a hard limit or can it be overridden through a registry setting? Also, I know that Multipoint is being included in the upcoming Windows Server version, perhaps that will remove the limitation and allow us to scale based on hardware/acceptable performance?

The free version of Forensit can only do one user at a time. The paid version allows you to do as many as you want and also allows for scripting.

Might also want to take a look at: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows-7/110305-microsoft-releases-massive-slow-boot-slow-login-hotfix-rollup-kb2775511.html http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2728738/en-us

I would create a Test OU and block inheritance. Move or create a user in that OU along with a test machine and test logon times. I'm guessing you have some old policies that are causing this. You might also want to set this on your test machine, it might help with troubleshooting: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/enable-verbose-status-message-windows Do you have any logon/startup scripts? Other things to check: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/f3beb19c-b83d-422e-ba53-12eb4df81179/boot-up-hangs-at-please-wait-for-ever-nla-service-is-culprit?forum=itprovistanetworking http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2617858

You could give this a try. ForensiT Move Computer I have used it in the past and it works quite well. You will need to buy a license however if you want scripting capabilities (it is very inexpensive though). USMT is also doable but depending on what program settings you want to capture, can be a bit of work.

We have used USMT to great effect for Windows settings, user files, and Microsoft application settings (Internet Explorer/Office 2013) but to capture all the user personalized settings and files we use ForensiT Transfer Wizard: ForensiT Move Computer

If I understand you correctly, you are getting prompted because you are running something other than the most recent version of the Java plugin. Internet Explorer begins blocking out-of-date ActiveX controls - IEBlog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs Read the part listed under "Out-of-date ActiveX control blocking for managed environments". Hope this helps.

Are you running the current version of Java? Internet Explorer begins blocking out-of-date ActiveX controls - IEBlog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

I agree, Defender is just fine as my sole anti-virus solution, however, I do like to bolster security by installing either Microsoft EMET: Download Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit 5.0 from Official Microsoft Download Center or Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit: Malwarebytes | Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit - Free Zero-Day Exploit Protection

Just for fun I unchecked IPv6 from the Ethernet adapter on the 7010 and so far it has not taken a second IP address.

We upgraded from 8.0 to 8.1 over the summer and it has been well received. As mentioned by a few others, we offered a brief training session and posted a small printout with some keyboard shortcuts at every instructor station. For the start screen we looked at using group policy using powershell to export the layout: Start Screen Cmdlets in Windows PowerShell But ultimately we ended up using a combination of USMT in some areas and a third party solution in others. The third party solution was by a company called Forensit. Ultimately we are running Windows 8.1 on ~1400 machines though and all is well!

Looked into it, but that is a different issue under different circumstances which appears to have been resolved by an updated driver back in March of this year.

Last week we started running out of IP addresses in a few ranges where we were imaging for some Windows 8 to 8.1 upgrades. Looking at our Server 2008 R2 DHCP server, we saw something strange. There were a lot more addresses used than physical machines. There were a lot of entries where the MAC address was very long. They all started with 44454c4. After performing a search it looked as though these belonged to some type of VMWare vm (esx, workstation, player). I informed our network manager and he tracked them back to some of our Dell workstations running Windows 8.1. Out of almost 160 workstations that are all the same model (Dell OptiPlex 790) with the same image, close to 50 of them were taking 2 IP addresses. One normal IP associated with their actual MAC address and the other that made it look as though they were some type of VMWare VM. We then noticed that this was happening in another range with just two machines. One was another OptiPlex 790 and the other was a newer OptiPlex 7010, both running Windows 8.1. Both of these models have the same Intel NIC. All were running the latest driver direct from Intel.com. I then went to Dell and downloaded their driver for Windows 8.1 (for the 7010 since the 790's don't list 8.1). I then applied this driver to both machines then turned them off and cleared out all associated DHCP entries. After turning them back on, the OptiPlex 790 no longer ate 2 IP's but the 7010 did. It was then that I realized that most of the IT staff are running Windows 8.1 on OptiPlex 7010's but are not having this issue. I checked a few machines and saw that they were running an older driver from 2012. This driver came down either from Windows itself or from Windows Updates. I am in the process of recreating our Windows 8.1 image right now without the Intel NIC driver to see if our problem goes away. Anyone else seen this phenomenon? I was going to post this in Intel's support forum on their site, but I didn't feel like creating an account. Besides, it doesn't look like it sees much traffic anyway (at least in the NIC area).

While it looks like you already have a solution in mind, I was going to recommend this: PsShutdown Not sure if it can be configured to run as a service, but it is quite handy in our environment.

Maybe this could help? Windows 7 Clients intermittently fail to apply group policy at startup

I would definitely look into configuring the Default Profile. Also, you might want to take a look at this product: ForensiT Desktop Management It allows you to assign a single profile to a group of users.

I have a Server 2012R2 VDI collection. I am looking at using Windows 7 ThinPC for the local workstations to access the collection. Since these are general use machines (think kiosk mainly), I would like to use one generic domain account and have them auto logon and auto connect to the collection. It would be nice if this could all be done with Group Policy but I am having a difficult time actually finding any information on this portion of the setup. All the results I have found only discuss setting certain group policies for the VDI collection, not the clients that are connecting to them. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Would something like this work for you? WinAero: Ribbon Disabler for Windows 8

Anything in Event Viewer? Maybe try moving one of the machines to a different OU, maybe a Test OU that blocks inheritance. Could be some strange combination of policy that is changing some settings when not connected to the domain. Also, I saw this but since you didn't mention problems with Windows Update I assume this won't be of much help (but still, you never know): Fixed IE 10 unable to download, Windows Update not functioning, MS Excel web query broken problem | The 8th Voyager

Yes! Hoping for apps that I can install on my Windows Phone or RT devices! Any word on how that Windows Phone app is coming?

You can join them to your domain and associate Microsoft Accounts to Domain Accounts. This allows you to maintain control over them while still allowing them to access the Windows Store. I haven't looked into automating this process, but I imagine there is a way (powershell?). To do it manually you go to PC Settings -> Accounts -> Your Account -> Connect to a Microsoft account.