jthompson

Not so much Hurricane Milton as Hurricane Milton Keynes. I'm just going to go ahead and assume that there's an Excel spreadsheet somewhere that's responsible for these unseasonably hypersonic wind speeds.

There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who can read binary, and those who can't.

Restricting users from toggling "Airplane" mode (sic). Not necessarily a Win 11 thing, but it seems more prominent with the new style system toggles. GPO applied to disable the Windows service named "Radio Management Service" in "Computer config > Policies > Winodws Settings > Security Settings > System Services".

This is what I used - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/taskbar/pinned-apps?tabs=intune&pivots=windows-11

I see "Microsoft Office LTSC Professional Plus 2024". The version I deployed (as in the version that the deployment tool downloaded) was 16.0.17932.20114, which has since updated itself on my test machines to 16.0.17932.20130.

Maybe this will clear the way for an entire new difficulty level of tennis for the super-elite players: get rid of the lines themselves and see how well they can do.

I hope they pick a voice that sounds just like Scarlett Johansson.

Which ADK are you using?

TBH, I've always found the classic right-click menu to be quite messy, especially if you have apps installed that add entries to it. I get why they've done the newer one, but leaving off the text labels for cut/copy/paste was pretty dumb.

MDT makes a lot of use of WMI to gather information on the computer, but 24H2 no longer has the wmic utility which the MDT scripts may be depending on. Not exactly sure if that's the root cause of your error, but I've a hunch that it may be. Your level of success with 24H2 in MDT is likely going to depend on what your task sequence is wanting to do, and how much of the computer info it needs is being gathered under WinPE (which will still have wmic) as opposed to under 24H2.

You should NEVER park on the pavement!

Using only school-managed services for school business seems like a clear enough distinction to me. You shouldn't have to namecheck any particular app or service in doing that. When you can provide staff with Google Chat, nobody has any business whatsoever using WhatsApp for staff to staff work comms. The fact that officials in government seem to be habitually doing govt business in ephemeral WhatsApp chats has always amazed me. There must be IT people constantly tearing their hair out about that.

For a light-controlled junction I'd have expected there to be a light-controlled pedestrian crossing, too.

I feel like that second one has been created deliberately as some kind of fiendish brain-twisting test. A bit like reading the names of colours that are themselves printed in a different colour to that written. How fast can you read it without making a mistake?

We set up a similar method with Win10 deployment in MDT, and I had thought I'd done he same with the Win11 deployment share, but your post got me thinking so I checked. Although I've got drivers in driver groups named for each model, I must have forgotten to add the "Select Driver Group" step into the task sequence, so out Win11 deployments have just been picking drivers from the whole lot each time. Not encountered any issues out of that (Dell only here). In any case, we see newly-imaged Win11 machines grabbing drivers from WU, so there's probably something to be said for just letting machines get drivers from WUfB anyway. Oh, and I'm still seeing WMIC working on an up to date 23H2 machine, which will be based on a June ISO. Which month's ISO of 23H2 is your MDT using that has WMIC disabled?

Intel chips older than gen5 are IIRC not officially supported for Windows 10, but they've been getting updates okay all this time whilst we've been waiting for funding to replace them. I mean, Intel chips older than gen8 are IIRC not officially supported for Windows 11, but they've been getting updates okay all this time whilst we've been waiting for funding to replace them. I think you need to go as far back a Core2 before even W11 24H2 won't actually boot. The only proper solution that doesn't expose you to sudden inability to get software updates is to get management to fund replacements of some kind or another. Even Chrome OS Flex isn't really an option, since there's device certification involved there that could cause updates to stop flowing/working on older kit.

I'm sure you'll be able to in-place upgrade, but it's just that there isn't an "enablement package" update that just switches on new features already installed by regular cumulative updates. That was the case with the later Win10 feature updates where the OS was pretty mature and so the changes were pretty minimal.

Using Get-CMIInstance to query for installed software is apparently a bad idea, since Windows will run the installer to check/repair the installation (https://matthewdavis111.com/powershell/finding-installed-software/#avoid-get-ciminstance-and-get-wmiobject) I'm now checking for installed versions by looking in the registry at HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\. Much faster than doing it the wmic way. I'm using a PowerShell script for it, but I guess the registry could be queried in other ways, too.

Office 2024 is also in VLSC now, in case people are testing out upgrades.

In the registry in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\NotifyIconSettings, the keys there correspond to systray icons. If a key has a DWORD entry named IsPromoted set to 1, then the app will be pinned for the user in the systray. The problem is that the key names look like random strings, so you'd have to have a user logon script that searches through those keys to find a match within ExecutablePath, to then add IsPromoted to the key.

Managed a successful capture and reimaging yesterday with 24H2. I strip out unwanted AppX packages from the vanilla OS before running any task sequences against it, using a script based on using Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage. I found that trying it during the task sequence wasn't always successful, with apps sometimes getting provisioned already before the step in the sequence gets run. I haven't updated my script for that from what I wrote for 23H2, so it doesn't attempt to remove the Copilot app. I'll give it a go and see it it can remove it. I know that the Get Started app is a special case for some reason, as it reappears despite an apparently successful attempt to remove it, so it could be that Copilot is similarly special. EDIT: Hmm, I think the Copilot app is just a web app, running in an instance of Edge, so no AppX package to speak of.

Never used them, but the Android "Find My Device" network is sounding more promising than it used to, although I suspect the fragmentation of Android won't be conducive to as a reliable a network as Apple's (https://www.androidcentral.com/accessories/testing-new-google-find-my-device-trackers). IME most versions of Android that normal people are running are shit versions of Android. Although if you're wanting to track items that are likely to remain onsite, then you only need a few compatible Android phones wandering about the place to give yourself a chance of locating things. There's an interesting range of trackers, at least, with rechargable/replaceable batteries and various form factors. We beefed up our loans recording system a while back, with good results. Using a custom AppSheet app, with various API calls and automations and hanging off it. Making it as fast and convenient as possible for humans to check items in and out reliably goes a long way in combating uncooperative borrowers.

WMIC is apparently deprecated and off by default in 24H2. One of our computer startup bat scripts uses wmic to query the installed version of a piece of software, so doesn't work. Will have to switch to using a PowerShell method of doing it instead.

I don't think so. From the blog post: EDIT: LTSC 2024 is a separate release, which is also now available. Seeing both in VLSC today.

Hoping it'll play as okay with MDT as 23H2. Nice to have better native support for different archive filetypes, but still no ability to encrypt an archive, so 7-Zip will stay for now.