Michael

Are you bridging using WiFi or Ethernet? WiFi isn't always as reliable, it very much depends on drivers.

That's interesting, as of course Hyper V is basically its own OS, whereas VMWare is tiny. A totally different design. With Hyper-V you solve one problem, but then create half a dozen, which is why I ask the question.

Mathletics do offer SSO options now (just so you know).

But do you backup your actual Hyper V host as well?

So is it just SIMS you primarily virtualise or other services? The only reason I ask, is because I'm working on a project whereby I intend to implement Namespaces across a WAN setup, which then ends up syncing in Azure, so I'm thinking what's the purpose or benefit of virtualising in this scenario?

Out of curiosity, those of you who've gone fully virtual, what's your disaster recovery solution in the event your Hyper V host goes down, be it hosting SIMS or other? What's your backup strategy? Backup the Hyper V host, and all instances or separately?

I agree with the article above, Powershell always was the Command Prompt replacement; yet Powershell will still process commands, so it's no massive loss.

Long term plan B is change your MIS for a cloud based solution.

Is Bootcamp out the question, so you cut out the virtualisation part?

Hi all, Is it still the case that MS Edge cannot do Booklets, even on Redstone? Just had this flagged up, but unsure if it's a driver or Edge limitation. Works in all other applications, so presume it's Edge being the limiting factor? As a workaround, I've advised said Teacher to open the PDF in Word 2016, as logically all print options are available.

As above, I wrote some guidance on this not long ago here. In addition though, I would say I've had considerably less issues with Printers deploying Windows 10 1607 (Redstone). Also there's considerably less (if at all) of an issue when it comes to printer name duplication, for no apparent reason. 1511 really is a 'bodge' of the original OEM version. 1607 is much more polished.

I'd suggest you deploy with the recommended switches rather than modify the MSI (personally). I wouldn't want to recommend something I am absolutely certain about On newer builds (like Redstone), I've performed a manual custom install, then used Group Policies to control how the Start Menu itself behaves.

You'd have to install using a script, unless you successfully modify the real MSI.

The Atheros AR946x is definitely not dual band. I've come across this model often.

I use the same method as I would Windows 7 for redirected Start Menu. As for disabling Classic Explorer and Classic IE you have two choices - Either install Classic Shell as part of a master image and exclude the above during a custom setup. Uninstall Classic Shell (if installed via GPO), then re-install specifying the required parameters.

Within Classic Shell Settings, navigate to the 'Customize Start Menu' tab. To the right of 'User Files' select 'Don't display this item' from the drop down menu. This then forms part of the regedit you can import using GPP - HKCU > SOFTWARE > IvoSoft > ClassicStartMenu > Settings - MenuItems7. Copy/paste the contents of this into your GPP policy.

Do we need a new ADMX template, or does the existing one do this?

I use Smart Notebook 11.4 and disable Smart Ink - you can do this in two ways - Remove it from Programs and Features and/or Delete the registry entry so it doesn't start at Startup.

Unfortunately it's not as clear cut as that - Start look for shortcuts (reading other posts), in other areas of the system (ProgramData) top of my head. What makes it worse is it gives different results on different users, different devices all built from the same core image. It's just an absolute disaster and Microsoft (it appears) don't seem to acknowledge it in the slightest. At the very least if so many professionals are struggling to create a custom/deployable Start Menu, then maybe a utility should be created, but again this hasn't happened either. Other issues I ran into is trying to change the layout at a later date, rather than at the point of deployment. Again it was well documented (especially on earlier builds) that this also was problematic.

The Agent is an MSI, the actual software isn't; I suspect (pure speculation), that because Solus 3 is comparatively new and the SIMS/FMS software is comparatively old, it's probably the perfect way to bridge the gap, but in reality it takes time to deploy an image and then deploy SIMS/FMS afterwards. As I said above, if all software worked like this, they'd be no point imaging. You'd be just as well to manually join the machine to the domain, but the reality is very different.

That's good to know, but definitely an oversight on Toshiba's part

I'm still not entirely convinced it's an MSI, otherwise (as I said above) why go to the trouble of creating Solus 3 in the first place? It's just ironic SIMS.net is Windows only, yet Capita (it appears) have neglected the fact you can deploy MSIs using Group Policy. Something that's been around since the Windows 2000 days and has hardly changed. In saying that, the only real benefit of Solus 3 is it obtains MIS updates from higher up the chain automatically; this makes sense (creating a local cache/deployment directory), but the initial deployment mechanism makes no sense and is time consuming.

But this server isn't public facing, it's just on the internal LAN.

Then why do I need Solus 3 to deploy an MSI?

I totally agree with this, Solus 3 is backwards. Being able to download/deploy the agent via MSI, then the agent grabbing the relevant SIMS/FMS files it needs would make a lot more sense. You could even have separate MSIs for SIMS and FMS, so only the required software is installed. If all applications worked like this, they'd be no point in imaging. To be honest though I highly doubt Capita would do something about this, given that their efforts are no doubt more on SIMS Online and not legacy SIMS.