DavR

UPDATE: Tape came today, and I'm pleasantly impressed at how good a job it did sticking down a bezel. The only drawback is it is quite thick, so it raised the bezel a little bit, but the hold is perfectly good. Just what I was after. Ten quid a go on expensive 3M professional tapes, to be bettered by some TV-advertised stuff with a silly name for less than a fiver! We live and learn.

We were being super posho and using Dell ones on some new machines that only came with HDMI - Dell - Video adapter - HDMI / VGA - black : Display Solutions | Dell We got these as a courtesy though, as Dell sent us PCs without VGA, despite us specifically asking for VGA. I took them out in the end in favour of discrete graphics cards, as with a VGA lead and often a splitter box hanging on the end of these, they were occasionally dropping out of the HDMI port. I could see a few years down the line the more delicate HDMI cable / connections getting broken.

We use IPevo Ziggi HD visualisers - https://www.amazon.co.uk/IPEVO-Ziggi-HD-High-Definition-Document-Camera/dp/B008DBF5Z8 The picture quality is great and they're really flexible, but I wouldn't recommend them, the joints break.

Never used lapel mics here, but for our assemblies and guest speakers we use Shure hand held wireless mics. This has the benefit that they can be passed around between speakers and in discussions Last one I bought was a Shure PG58 and receiver, and we've had no problems with it - https://www.studiospares.com/Microphones/Mics-Wireless/Shure-BLX24PG58-Vocal-System-CH38_433870.htm.

Might as well - it's saying it's copied the content. Worst comes to the worst, you can just download the content again overnight. As long as the content location is changed that's the main thing. Fairly sure I when I moved our WSUS content folder there was still content in the old one when I deleted the partition it was on.

Windows Update, and by extension WSUS, is so blumin unpredictable sometimes isn't it!

@Michael is probably right, I doubt I need every update, but in all honesty I don't have time to review them. Updates are either on or off as far as I'm concerned, and to cover myself like @mavhc I want all the protection necessary! I'll have to time how long Windows Updates are currently taking on a test machine, and see if delta updates can improve on it any. As this is a new setup, I'm not entirely sure how Windows Updates are behaving under 10. As I say, my main worry is users being faced with a 10-20 minute startup because it's first boot after updates....

Those weren't exact times, this was a laptop I set off updating and was chiefly concerned at the time it took on the reboot. It may not be representative, but there's certainly some delay here I may need to mitigate. Can you schedule a wakeup on laptops? I suppose you could, it's not something I've tried. Under Windows 7 I've always just let updates download and install at shutdown, which could cause a few minutes delay sometimes but otherwise worked well. I was rather hoping to get away with the same again for Windows 10, rather than having to configure out of hours maintenance windows or doing manual patching.

Delta updates? Ok, that's a new one on me! So we went from batches of single updates monthly, to Cumulative Updates containing every update since release, back to single updates monthly (albeit rolled into one package). I do wish MS would make their minds up! Thank you for that though, I will need to read up on that. Looks like it only saves on the download rather than the install time though :/

For future reference, if you want WSUS to remove immediately, you can use the deadline functionality. If you set it for removal with a deadline in the past, it will see it as overdue and thus start a removal when PC next check in. More info here. I did this with KB4011039 just recently, due to some bug it introduced to Word with tables, and it worked pretty well. Out of interest, what does KB4011038 break?

Over the summer I completed our Windows 10 update, and while it was a bit of a bumpy road to get there, it seems to be behaving and performing well. The only possibly snag that I'm worried about is Windows Updates, as we hit the September update cycle. I've just updated one laptop with this months update, and the install of updates took about 20 minutes, and the reboot to complete probably took another 20! Under Windows 7 I just let Windows Update get on with it and install patches at shutdown/reboot, but if we're talking these kind of times I might need to rethink. We have trolleys of laptops, I can't see class teachers being too pleased at having to wait that long to get a lesson started. What is the general consensus with Monthly Rollups on Windows 10? Are people letting them out and sucking up the delay caused, or are we holding off and doing manual patching during the holidays? I know some people have chosen LTSB to avoid this, but we wanted to have the full feature set and went for full Enterprise.

Nicely done Promethean, please come up to the podium and collect the MS Paint Backpeddle Prize! Joking aside, a sensible move. Flipchart files have been around for what, a decade plus? You can't just drop native support for them overnight, people have thousands of the things. That and the fact that for most of us ActivInspire continues to offer pretty much everything we need.

Just an update on this for anyone who's following.... I have now completed my downgrade, it took a while but I've massively reduced this year's Veeam renewal We were running Veeam Enterprise, and took a two step downgrade process to go from Enterprise to Standard, then Standard to Standard Essentials. Enterprise to Standard was free, but switching Standard to Standard Essentials cost £79 per 2 socket bundle for a one off conversion fee. We were quoted £1020 for this years maintenance agreement, but even with the conversion fee, this year's bill is now down to £474! Definitely worth pursuing.

Well, Gorilla looks worth a go, its cheaper than the 3M crap I've thrown away about £20 on so far...

Cheers both! These are student devices, so I think blu tac wouldn't quite cut it, and would be peeled off and fiddled with in minutes. On the other extreme, I don't really want to go with superglue in case they do need to be opened again for service. Strong enough to hold fast, but can be re-opened at a push. I will look into Gorilla tape then. I must admit, I've seen their adverts, but just assumed it was sales hyperbole.

Hi all, Possibly a daft question, but I thought I'd ask anyway. I have a number of Dell laptops where, due to repair work or wear and tear, the front bezel around the screen has become a bit loose. This is due to little plastic clips breaking. I had a bright idea that maybe some double sided tape or sticky pads would hold them in place, or at the very least stop the corners flapping, so after research I went online and bought a couple of expensive 3M tapes, one double sided foam and one adhesive transfer. Both were $%^& useless, they stuck to the backing paper more than metal or plastic, and peeled off with ease. Can anyone recommend a particular brand of tape for this, something almost permanent, or share solutions they've used in the past? I'd rather not pay £15 a go for replacement bezels when surely all it needs is a bit of sticky... Dave.

Hi all, Just a trick to share re disabling the wireless / Airplane Mode switches on Dell Laptops, which is hopefully transferable to other makes. Having installed Windows 10 on a bunch of laptops, I was most annoyed to find that, despite having the wireless hardware switch disabled in BIOS, in Windows users could still use this to put the machine in Airplane Mode, thus knocking out the wireless connection. I found my answer using the suggestions on this page, this turns out to be due to the switch installing as a separate device called "Airplane Mode Switch" under Human Interface Devices. Disabling this device as well as all BIOS options has now fully neutralised the switch. I used the Device Installation restrictions under group policy as described in the link to do this. Tested and verified on Dell Latitude E5530 laptops, but the method should be transferable; disable radio switches in the BIOS, and then disable the Airplane Mode Switch (name may vary) hardware device under HID in Device Manager. Farewell pesky wireless switches!

Now you mention it, I did have a bit of a ballache sysprep-ing my reference image because of apps. Something to bear in mind next time, although I'll leave it be for now on my Windows 10 task sequence. Another wonderful example of a Windows 10 feature, that even on the Enterprise version, that gets in the way of Enterprise deployment / usage...

Update - I've built over a hundred workstations this week, and my luck seems to be holding! Only oddity is that it take a few reboots to apply. First boot after deployment I get a background image (August update seems to have introduced a moose of some kind to replace the cave), then after a reboot this goes away, but may have a grey-screen effect for a bit before my chosen image (I went for plain blue because I lack imagination) takes hold. It's never just simple is it.... still, better than running scripts or staring at that cave!

This looks like my answer @Arthur, thanks very much! I will play with that when I get a chance Re Windows Store Apps, is that a thing that downloads during deployment? I thought those installed themselves "on demand" when clicked on? Either way, they're gonna have to install at some point so I guess I'll leave them to it. After all, that does seem to be Microsoft's strategy with apps, ie, no control whatsoever!

Did you ever get anywhere with these Af? I'm doing the Windows 10 update on all our laptops, and having to redo the paper labels again.... interested to see if you found a better way!

Has anyone found a reliable method of stopping Windows 10 reaching out to Windows Update for device drivers during deployment? I've got that feature turned off in group policy for general day-to-day (I assume its working), but when I'm installing in a SCCM task sequence (ie, pre GP) Windows 10 keeps downloading updated drivers via Windows Update. As far as I can tell this happens just after my TS applies drivers locally, like after onsite driver install it performs an online check for updated versions. I'm using HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate set to 1 in the registry of my build to theoretically stop this, but it doesn't seem to be respecting that setting. Under the same key I've also turned off automatic updates under the AU key. How have you guys achieved this, or have you just accepted this behaviour?

Indeed, thank God for Edugeek is all I can say! Edugeek - making me look like I know what I'm doing since 2005....

Hmmm, not sure if Microsoft have finally fixed this in August CU, or whether I've just hit on a lucky combination, but this is now working for me! I'm just getting ready to do a whole school rollout, and have thus updated my Windows 10 build with latest updates. Now, when I build from scratch with my up to date build, this setting works (although sometimes needs a reboot before it kicks in) and my chosen background shows. I can also use policy to flick between different backgrounds. Interestingly, existing workstations that I install August CU on to do not get fixed, they remain with the cave image. I can only imagine that the bug is caused by a corrupt cache, and the fix stops the cache corrupting (ie on new builds), but doesn't fix ones that are already corrupt (ie existing workstations). Like I say I may just have been lucky but thought I'd share my experience

You're doing the Windows 10 upgrade this summer too huh - well, best of luck to you. I'm nearly ready to start rolling out to all workstations, but getting this far has been a right £$%^&!