Tag: Windows 8.1

Most books written about Microsoft products are very focused on one single product. A book about Windows Server covers all you need about the server OS itself. A book about System Center Configuration Manager covers everything you need to know about ConfigMgr in its bubble and a book about a Windows client covers everything you need to know about the client itself.

The book Enterprise Client Management using Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 covers not only the Windows client (Windows 7 as well as 8.1) but how to manage it using Windows Server 2012 R2 and the System Center 2012 R2 products. So all in all a complete scenario on how to manage your Windows clients in the enterprise in a very effective way using Microsoft management tools available.

The book is now also available on Kindle as of mid April 2015!

Many thanks to all of you who attended my session yesterday. So here is a summary of the key takeaways from my session “Preparing for Windows 10” at TechDays Sweden 2014 November 19th. Consider this an action list in what you can do today to prepare yourself form Windows 10.

Cleaning up

Yeah, it is so boooooring, but still a golden opportunity to make your client environment more standardized and less complex. Make sure to remove GPOs and GPO settings that are not necessary, remove or replace scripts, applications or components that are not needed. Also, if you have a Premier support agreement with Microsoft, do use the RAP as a Service for Windows Desktop to let Microsoft do an analysis of your environment and suggesting remediation.

Application compatibility

App compat when moving from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 or 10 is practically 99%+ success in terms of regular Win32 based applications. Still actual testing of applications needs to be done for business critical applications.

New way of doing inventory in Windows 10

There are new WMI classes in Windows 10 that can be used to collect software inventory. The information can be displayed using PowerShell. Also, there is a feature that inventories what framework or runtime an application is dependent on, for instance which version of .NET Framework or Visual C++ Runtime and it can even see if there are dependencies for OpenSSL. Imagine having these feature in place when the HeartBleed bug appeared earlier this year.

Display all installed applications on a Windows 10 machine:

Get-WMIObject Win32_InstalledProgram | select Name,  Version, ProgramID | out-GridView

Display all apps and dependent frameworks on a Windows 10 machine for a specific application (replace the ProgramID in the filter section with another one from the above example):

Get-WMIObject Win32_InstalledProgramFramework -Filter "ProgramID = '00000b9c648fd31856f33503b3647b005e740000ffff'" | select ProgramID, FrameworkName, FrameworkVersion | out-GridView

or to bake them together to get both the application name and associated frameworks:

$Programs = Get-WMIObject Win32_InstalledProgram | select Name, ProgramID
$result = foreach ($Program in $Programs) {
$ProgramID = $program.programID
$Name = $program.Name
$FMapp = Get-WMIObject Win32_InstalledProgramFramework -Filter "ProgramID = '$programID'"
foreach ($FM in $FMapp) {
$out = new-object psobject
$out | add-member noteproperty Name $name
$out | add-member noteproperty ProgramID $ProgramID
$out | add-member noteproperty FrameworkPublisher $FM.FrameworkPublisher
$out | add-member noteproperty FrameworkName $FM.FrameworkName
$out | add-member noteproperty FrameworkVersion $FM.FrameworkVersion
$out
}
}
$result | out-gridView

What I forgot to mention in yesterday’s session was that these feature are being back ported to previous Windows versions, as that is where you’d typically want to run the inventory, but much of the feature regarding this new way of doing inventory is still work in progress.

Applications in a mobile world

With Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 and the new types of devices that make users more mobile gives other challenges. It is one thing that the OS and devices are great at supporting a mobile work scenario, but without apps that also adhere to this environment you will have challenges. Make sure that the technology to deliver the user experience is evaluated, upgrade the user interfaces where necessary or port them (or parts of them) to modern apps.

Internet Explorer

In terms of moving to Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 you will face the most application compatibility challenges with IE11 and web apps. After the summer Microsoft announced that from January 2016 only the latest version of IE will be supported on the currently supported OS’s.

Are you running your intranet sites in IE7 mode?

Regardless if you run IE8, IE9, IE10 or IE11 you are very likely to (without knowing it) running all or many your internal web apps in IE7 mode, due to this nasty little settings still being default in Windows 10 and IE in Windows 10.

That is the setting that you will find by going go Tools menu and then Compatibility View settings. The setting which I strongly recommend to uncheck (set it via Group Policies) is called “Display intranet sites in Compatibility View”. I have seen this setting causing problems with web apps because modern web apps and systems stop supporting IE7 and thereby not working in IE11.

Deploy Internet Explorer 11 today!

Well, deploy IE11 today and start working with compatibility testing your web apps!

IE11 Enterprise Mode

Enterprise Mode in IE11 is a compatibility mode that runs web apps in IE8 mode to make them work on IE11. With the November 2014 CU update for IE11 you will be able to not only set web apps to run in IE8 mode but also any document mode such as IE10, IE9, IE7 or even IE5.

More on IE11 Enterprise Mode and Enterprise Mode Site List Manager.

For those of you already running IE11 – inventory tool!

Not long ago Microsoft released a little tool that will inventory all the web sites a user visits to provide means to get a grip on web app compatibility. The inventory is activated on specific clients (or all if that is OK in terms of integrity etc) and is collected via WMI to for instance System Center Configuration Manager. There are pre-made reports that can be used. More on Enterprise Site Discovery Toolkit for Internet Explorer 11.

Taming the user interface for Windows 8.1 enterprise users

A good thing to prepare for Windows 10 is to deploy Windows 8.1. Some time ago I wrote a blog post on how to customize the user interface in Windows 8.1 to make it work as expected and make it easier for the end users. Read the blog post Taming the user interface for Windows 8.1 enterprise users.

Install Windows 10 Technical Preview

Of course you can and should install Windows 10 Technical Preview for a number of reasons. Test applications, test in-place upgrade and last but not least, provide Microsoft with feedback either using the built in Windows Feedback app or via UserVoice. This is a unique opportunity to still influence how and what Windows 10 will be!

UEFI

Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 have a security feature that is dependent on that a machine is installed in UEFI mode, that is Secure Boot. UEFI replaces the 30 year old BIOS that has “always” been around. Note that Microsoft talks very much about in-place-upgrades from previous versions to Windows 10. However, as switching to UEFI demands that you reinstall your OS you will not be able to get the full benefit of Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 if you are running your machines in legacy boot mode.

Figure out if your machines are running in UEFI and if not, make sure that you have an infrastructure that supports it and that you switch to UEFI mode in your client machines BIOSs’.

The easiest way to determine if you are running in UEFI mode is to run msinfo32.exe (only in Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10). There is a new line that clearly displays that.

If running Windows 7 (or later) you can determine if running in UEFI mode by starting diskmgmt.msc and note if you have an EFI system partition. If you do, you are running in UEFI mode.

If you have Configuration Manager you can look at the pre-made report Hardware – Disk > Disk information for a specific computer – Partitions to see if you have machines that either are running in Legacy/BIOS mode which will have partitions named “Installable File System” or UEFI machines that will have GPT partitions and in particular a GPT System partition.

Cloud connections

If you haven’t already done so look into Azure AD and what is has to offer. The cloud connections in Windows 10 will be significant!

Summary

There are quite a few things you can do to prepare yourself for Windows 10 so that you are ready when Windows 10 is released sometime next year. Happy Windows 10’ing!

After extensive troubleshooting, hours after hours, I have finally located a certainly interesting problem with the install routine of modern apps, including the immersive control panel in Windows 8.1 (with Update).

Problem description

Whenever a user logs into a domain joined Windows 8.1 machine all modern apps included in the image have “x” / crosses on them and they cannot be started. Also the immersive control panel an all its settings are unavailable. A few of the error messages and codes:

Trying to start a modern app:

This app can’t open. There’s a problem with <app name>. Contact your system administrator about repairing or reinstalling it

or

This app does not support the contract specified or is not installed.

and in Swedish:

Den här appen stöder inte det angivna avtalet eller så har det inte installerats.

Trying to install an app using Add-AppxPackage PowerShell cmdlet:

Add-AppxPackage : Deployment failed with HRESULT: 0x80073CF6, Package could not be registered. error 0x8007064A: Cannot register the request because the following error was encountered while initializing the windows.repositoryExtension extension: The configuration data for this product is corrupt. Contact your support personnel.

Cause

After going through a bunch of GPOs and hundreds of settings and excluding the most likely settings I finally reached out to what turned out to be the cause. Simply the use of “restricted groups” in group policies to add NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM to the local Administrators group on the Windows 8.1 machines is what is the cause. The problem can easily be reproduced by adding SYSTEM to the Administrators group on domain or non-domain joined machines.

BE AWARE: SYSTEM has more privileges on a Windows box than an Administrator. Adding SYSTEM to the local administrators group effectively lowers the privileges of the SYSTEM account which apart from apparently causing modern apps to fail have a bunch of other unpredicted results on a Windows machine.

Solution

The solution is to remove SYSTEM from the local Administrators group from being applied via restricted groups. Adding the group SYSTEM to the local Administrators group is not necessary as SYSTEM is a member of the Administrators group per default, although it is not visible in the GUI (Computer Management).

When deploying Windows 8.1 Machines using System Center Configuration Manager 2012 R2, me and as good as everyone ever done a Windows 8.1 deployment using CM2012R2, has seen the issue. The issue is that the first time a user log in to the deployed machine, it gives an error:

The Group Policy Client service failed the sign-in.
The universal unique identifier (UUID) type is not supported.

The problem has been seen from time to time but at last there is a solution to this elusive problem. The solution or workaround actually, is provided in KB2976660: First logon fails with “The universal unique identifier (UUID) type is not supported”.

It is no secret that there are challenges related to the user interface in Windows 8.1. It is no secret that it has raised a lot of feelings – both good and bad. It is no secret that Microsoft is aware of the issues and they are bit by bit working on addressing them.

Windows 8.1 is without doubt the greatest and best operating system from Microsoft to date in terms of features and when it comes to security, performance, stability and responsiveness. Add to that an active development and continious distribution of fixes makes which Windows 8.1 the most dynamic Windows release to date.

However, not many enterprises use modern apps on their desktop/laptop machines and will not do so for quite some time. This blog post is intended to show you how you can make Windows 8.1 behave well in enterprises if you want your users to recognize themselves in the new user interface in Windows 8.1.

Boot to Desktop

The option for the user to instantly get to the desktop is imperative when matching the user experience to what they are used to. This means that instead of landing on the start panel after login, the user is taken straight to the desktop. Another issue with the user interface in Windows 8.1 is that if the user for instance open a PDF file from a desktop application, the PDF file will open in the Reader app (that is if Adobe Reader or another PDF reader has been installed). However, after closing the modern app the user is not brought back to the desktop application, instead lands on the Start panel. The below group policy setting solves these two “issues”.

In the Group policy Editor, locate the setting “Go to the desktop instead of Start when signing in or when or when all the apps on a screen are closed” located in User Configuration > (Policies) > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar and set it to Enabled.

Desktop background on start panel

A small but never the less important setting that will make your users recognize the desktop is the setting to make the desktop background image being present in the start panel.

Activate this setting by creating a User Group Policy Preference registry item with the following information:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Accent
Value name: MotionAccentId_v1.00
Value type: REG_DWORD (32-bit)
Value data:  000000DB (Hexadecimal)

File extensions for modern apps

In Windows 8.1 images there are a bunch of modern apps included, which are installed the first time a user log in to a Windows 8.1 machine. You can when building your Windows 8.1 image remove all provisioned modern apps which will not only speed up the first login to a machine but also prevent users from opening for instance pictures in the modern app picture viewer and instead open them in “Windows Photo Viewer” on the desktop.

Solution 1: Remove all provisioned apps by using Ben Hunter’s excellent script for this, see http://blogs.technet.com/b/deploymentguys/archive/2013/10/21/removing-windows-8-1-built-in-applications.aspx. In the scripts you see the relevant commands which can also be run manually, removing one modern app at a time. See the PowerShell cmdlets Get-AppxProvisionedPackage and Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage.

Solution 2: If you do not want to remove the provisioned apps, you can use Michael Niehaus’s great guide to remove the file associations from the modern apps. Michael also show how to deal with this dynamically at deployment time as you probably want to have this configuration dynamic if you are using Windows 8.1 on touch enabled devices. The blog post is located at http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2014/01/10/configuring-file-associations-in-windows-8-1.aspx

Customizing the start panel

Well, there are PowerShell scripts which you can use to export a start panel layout and then send it out to multiple users using group policy settings. However, your users will not be able to actually modify it which kind of make this feature useless to say the least. What you can do to customize the start panel, awaiting better and more dynamic means to centrally manage the layout, is image customizing the layout of the start panel in your Windows 8.1 image, and then use the CopyProfile=true method to make that start panel layout the default for all new user profiles. This will present a default layout of your choice which the end users will be able to modify to their liking.

Remove the (annoying) help guidance arrows

The help arrows that appear the first time a user sign in to a Windows 8.1 machine are important for the users to learn how to reach the charms menu and navigate in the new user interface, when they actively or mistakenly end up there. However these little helper arrows tend to become rather annoying after time and you will be glad to see that there are ways to turn them off.

Create a User Group Policy Preference that adds the following registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\EdgeUI
Value name: DisableHelpSticker
Value type: REG_DWORD (32-bit)
Value data: 1

The power of search

I have been involved in many deployment projects with Windows 7 and my simple conclusion is that users tend to love not to use the built in search box in the start menu in Windows 7. Moving to Windows 8.1 is not going to change that and especially not as the users have no idea that they can just type anything while on the start panel and a search will be performed. I’m still waiting for a group policy setting that will make users use search instead of clicking and clicking and clicking but until that arrives instruct your Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 to use the built in search feature.

Summary

Well, by taming how the user interface behaves and my modifying or totally removing the modern apps the start panel goes back to just being the search feature and the new user interface is acting pretty much as it always have traditionally in Windows. And at the time of this writing we know that there will be an update in April 2014 that will present even further improvements to the UI. Things are improving but rest assured, the good old start menu as we know it since Windows 95 will not be back.