Search the Community

Have 5 Lenovo touch screen laptops which were bought by a school (I didn't advise on this purchase) that have Windows 8.1 standard installed. I asked out admin dept to get a quote to upgrade to 8.1 Pro and was told today it can't be done and that the school would have to buy a full licence with educational discount for £113. I can't see this is correct and wondered if anyone else has come across this and if anyone has any advise as to where the school could go out and buy an upgrade license at a more respectable price. Also, as a slide twist on this I'd like to start with a fresh install of Pro using the upgrade licence - so run the disk, choose to carry over any data and let it go for it... I'm guessing there would be no issues with using the upgrade key to do this (although ultimately I'd have a play anyway and image back if all goes horribly wrong!) Thanks as always...

Need some advice folks! Got a few Surface tablets in school that are running windows 8! ive ran all the windows updates apart from windows update 8.1 from the app store. when i go to run this update it fails, long story short our authority have web filtering in place and we think that either that or the firewall is blocking access to this update. we need to find out the ip address / dns name of the address that this update app program is trying to contact out on. ive downloaded sysinternals "TCPView" program and tried to run the "Tcpvcon" command line to export to a csv file but no luck can anyone else give me any advice to any other program that will record and log to a file what address a program will try and contact out on. thanks

Hi All I am trying to set my target location of my folders etc so that they are set to my network drive and not locally, but the target part under the location tab is not editable, i also do not see the 3 boxes underneath, is this a GPO setting that i'm not sure of? any ideas of it's location?

Hello, Updating computers to Windows 8 and everything has been going fine. However all of a sudden the gpo Computer Configuration>Policies>Administrative Templates>Control Panel>Personalization>Force a specific default lock screen image no longer works on new imaged computers. They are running Windows 8 Pro and are part of the domain. Any ideas? Dont want the Seattle image to be there in September Thank you.

Hi, I am in a bit of a fix and could do with some advice! for years, I have been using a Ghost bootable memory stick to image PCs and laptops, both Win XP & 7. Works perfectly by booting to USB and copying image to external hard drive. I now have 6 new Acer Netbooks running Win8. I set up the first with all the software I needed and created an image as I always have done. however, UEFI boot confused me and I had to go back to legacy boot to get it to boot from USB. I then ran sysprep but it ran for hours so I had no choice but to close it down. Bad mistake. Netbook is now corrupt. Meanwhile I used the image I created to set up one of the other netbooks. Appeared to work but "no bootable media". So, I have 2 disabled netbooks and desparately need to find a way to get them working. Does anyone have any advice for anything that will clone/image a Win 8 64 bit netbook (no CD/DVD drive)? If the answer is WDS, I would need very clear step by step instructions as I have never managed to get this to work even on XP and 7. I should add that I am running Server 2008 R2 but these netbooks will be standalone workgroup teacher laptops, not part of the domain. Half term now so no rush but any help greatfully received. Cheers Dave

I would like to create a login banner much like the one in the picture below for the login screen in Windows 8. I would prefer if it could be group policy deployable but doesn't have to be. Also I know it's definitely possible because I know a school in the local area that has the exact same banner but on Windows 8. Hope someone can help thanks .

The Windows Blog Pretty sure this is for WP7-8 and W8 stores so a pretty good deal for $8, silly about the cashback method though. As seen here

Afternoon All, for anyone who wants to keep track on Windows 8 Progress, the Engineering blog is now live again. Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs First Post: Welcome to Building Windows 8 - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs James.

Link: Microsoft Cuts Support For Windows 8: What This Means For You : PERSONAL TECH : Tech Times

Windows 8 And Windows 9? Windows 8 Concept Screenshot? http://s2.largeimagehost.com/displayimage.php?img=windows+8.jpg&loc=XUUrccU&skey=cto8 Article source: blog.eightforums.com

Hi all i work in a BYOD school with an externally managed CISCO wifi network. As far as i can work out, we have the latest firmware in our access points and controllers etc, so the original Win 8 and Cisco issue should not be the cause here. I have 5 win 8 machines that are failing to connect to the network. Authentication is username and password, AES, PEAP, no validation of server cert, and we don't use machine login info. Two specific cases are a HP envy touchscreen with Ralink RT3290 and also a samsung EX500 with Broadcom SDIO 43241. Drivers have been rolled back, updated, god knows what. Tried win 7 driver install but that failed to install. Still not able to connect. Done th eusual google the hell out of drivers, and forums etc, but feel like i'm in an endless loop of windows 8 hell. Any ideas, because i'm all out. Annoyingly, almost all other users are Mac based and everything just whistles through, and those with win 7 work ok, so never had a concern before win 8.

I really like Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 - we are also an Office 365 school. What I am struggling with is the need to create for students to create a Live ID in order to make use of the start screen. We are a primary school and most of our students are under 14 - the law in the US states that children under 13 cannot create internet accounts without parent permission and, in fact, Microsoft requires a fairly complex process for "approving" children's accounts in the US (I set up an account for my child - it was easy enough to attach that account to my personal account as a parent, but it also required credit card verification). It would be fantastic if our students could use their Office 365 accounts, but Office 365 accounts will not work for this - is has to be a "regular" Microsoft account. Even if we could use an Office 365 account, we do not use Office 365 with students lower than Grade 3 (8 years old), because of the complex password requirements. Additionally, an average student at our school uses several computers a week, depending on whether they are in the computer lab, a classroom, etc. Since we have domain logins, it would be helpful if their "Microsoft Account" could roam with them onto different computers, just like their documents do. It is also difficult for teachers (who do create their own personal Microsoft accounts) to figure out when to use their Microsoft account and when to use their Office 365 account. Apple and Google both offer enterprise management of their IDs. Am I missing something? How are others working around this?

Over the last two days this problem has been happening on our Windows 8 Machines Does anyone know why this is happening? The only thing I can think of is its An Update that has caused this as they have been fine up till now and no hardware or software has been installed over the network and also happening on different models of machine. Thanks Liam

I have recently been testing Windows 8 and its compatibility with the application suites used in our main ICT rooms - Thankfully no problems there! I have disabled the 'Show first sign-in animation' GPO so that I can see what is going on, besides most of our pupils have new laptops with windows 8 preloaded and know what they are doing. When I domain join one of these suite computers during a users first login I get the following screen This screen stays for a long time - I recorded 5 minutes several times. Entirely by accident one of the students realized that if you press CTRL + ALT + DEL to interrupt the Preparing Computer screen you can then access the desktop immediately. This makes me think that there isn't any vital config going on during this preparing computer stage and it is probably hanging. Has anyone else encountered this? I am not sure what to do about this long login wait. Thanks

Hi all, I'm wondering if anyone is actually deploying or thinking about deploying Windows 8 to clients? I'm in the process of setting up one of our suite machines with W8 and Office 2013 to test functionality / compatability with existing apps but in previous roll-outs I've waited until SP1 before deployment. My reasoning is that we're a mixed XP/Vista setup and instead of rolling out 7 and then rolling 8 in a year or 18 months time maybe I could roll-out 8 now. I'm aware that I'll need at least 1 machine on W8 to administer GPO's and that AFAIK there's no easy way to manipulate the start screen but I was wondering if anyone else is planning to deploy now?

I have spent some time this afternoon using DISM to customize Win8 install.wim files and upload them to my WDS server - if its any use to anyone else I have included the procedure below. Download Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows® 8 from Download Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) for Windows® 8 from Official Microsoft Download Center (you only need to select Deployment tools during installation for this) Extract the Install.Wim file from your Windows 8 ISO Create a temporary staging folder (in my case this is C:\dism\mount) run the following commands in command prompt cmd as administrator:- dism.exe /Mount-wim /Wimfile:c:\dism\install.wim /index:1 /MountDir:c:\DISM\mount Dism.exe /Image:c:\DISM\mount /Get-Provisionedappxpackages (this gives you a list of the installed metro apps which are installed when a new user is created) Dism.exe /Image:c:\DISM\mount /Remove-Provisionedappxpackage /PackageName:Microsoft...... (and repeat for all of the apps you don't want - I uninstalled all of them) Dism.exe /Unmount-Image /MountDir:c:\DISM\mount /Commit Copy the updated install.wim to your WDS server and deployed it as normal As a side note I also wanted to disable windows store for pupils so I have applied the following GPO Object - User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Store

Hi, This could probably go in a number of different forums, but as the main issue is with Windows 8 Pro, I have posted here. Please feel free to move / duplicate to Server 2008, if that is a better place for it. I am trying to activate a Windows 8 Pro machine on our domain network. In preparation for Win 8, I had already found out about the requirement to upgrade VAMT from 2 to 3 and I have downloaded the ADK and installed VAMT 3 (v6.2.9200.0) on the required 2008 R2 server with SQL 2008. This was a straight forward process and the VAMT service is running. I have installed all of my required keys, of which VAMT is quite happy with. I have also installed KB2757817, which is required when running VAMT 3 on 2008 R2. I ran slmgr /dlv to check that the server was running correctly and got an active response. VAMT has found lots of existing Windows 7 pcs and Office 14 which have been set against the KMS keys that we have been provided with. This tells me that the KMS service is running happily. To make sure I have looked at the Server Manager Event Logs. The KMS log shows lots of Event 12290, where the server is finding machines on the network, however the Windows 8 pcs in these events are returning an error code of 0xC004F042 in their data but, the Windows 7 pcs return 0x0 in their data. The VAMT log on the server shows an error event 1000 VAMT Runtime. Data for this is: Error while updating products: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x800706BA): The RPC server is unavailable. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800706BA) at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ThrowExceptionForHRInternal(Int32 errorCode, IntPtr errorInfo) at System.Management.ManagementScope.InitializeGuts(Object o) at System.Management.ManagementScope.Initialize() at System.Management.ManagementScope.Connect() at Microsoft.Licensing.VolumeActivation.WmiConnection.Connect() at Microsoft.Licensing.VolumeActivation.UpdateProductsProvider.RefreshMachineGenericInformation() at Microsoft.Licensing.VolumeActivation.UpdateProductsProvider.UpdateProducts() on machine using credential On the Windows 8 pc, I have run the slmgr /dlv, which tells me that the Product key ends: J8CK4, however my KMS key on the server ends: FKQW7. This report also says that I need to run slmgr /ato to activate the machine? (Doesn't this defeat the point of a KMS server if each machine has to be activated individually?) The KMS log on the PC is empty. The application log however, contains the following:- Information event ID 12288 - The client has sent an activation request. (The data for this shows the IP address of the VAMT server, so its trying to talk to the right server.) Information event ID 1003 - The software protection service has completed licensing status check. Error event ID 8198 - License Activation (slui.exe) failed with the following error code: hr=0xC004F074. As our network has its own Firewall, I have turned off the firewall on all internal machines on the domain so there should not be any restrictions on any network services or protocols. The RPC service is running on both the server and the Windows 8 PC. As you can see, this is becoming a little frustrating, especially as the VAMT server is functioning fine with all of the Windows 7 and 2008 machines on the domain. I have looked over the internet for any existing support or documents regarding this, but most point at upgrading to the 6.2.9200 version of VAMT, which I am already running. Any assistance you may be able to offer would be much appreciated. Thanks, Barry.

Windows 8 offers unparalleled new opportunities for application developers to build and sell apps world-wide via the Windows Store. In this event, Microsoft will deliver developer-level, demo-driven sessions that give you an accelerated entry into what it means to design, develop and publish exciting, modern, polished, world-ready applications for next-generation devices running Windows 8. Microsoft are hosting a special one day event for UK Students only at: Microsoft Customer Centre Cardinal Place, Victoria 80-100 Victoria Street SW1E 5JL London United Kingdom Friday, June 8, 2012 from 9:30 AM to 3:00 PM (BST) Register Now Level of knowledge required: 1. Beginners Welcome. 2. A familiarity with .NET development and Visual Studio would be advantageous but not required. Agenda (subject to change): 09:30 – 10:00 - Registration Opens 10:00 – 11:00 - Windows 8 for Modern App Development 11:00 – 12:00 - Metro Design Language 12:00 – 12:30 - Lunch 12:30 – 13:30 - "Metro Style" Apps - The Power of the Device 13:30 – 14:30 - “Metro Style" Apps - The Power of the Cloud 14:30 – 15:00 - From Idea to Store – Next Steps on the Journey Enjoy! Register Now Regards, James. Source: Be one of the first to help create an amazing experience for Microsoft