Rant: Windows 8.1 in a Corporate Environment

[dabigginger]

Seriously, this is doing my head in now. It seems that Microsoft have gone out of their way to make Windows 8 and 8.1 the biggest possible headache for corporate environments. We have a number of mobile users who have a requirement for a tablet style Windows-based computer, so Windows 8.1 seems to fit the bill. We got a couple of machines last year with Windows 8 Professional. I've only just got around to getting an image setup for these. As we normally use Windows Enterprise Edition, I go to install 8.1 Enterprise and for some reason some of the devices don't start with the drivers provided. If I install Windows 8, then upgrade to 8.1, they work. The manufacturer can't help any further. Fine. I'll just build the image with Windows 8 Pro, upgrade it to 8.1 and jobs a goodun, or so I thought...

Firstly, you can't sysprep a machine that's been upgraded. Massive pain in the bum. Plan b, build the image in 8 with all the customizations, sysprep, deploy and then upgrade. Then I find out after the upgrade, that the upgrade process creates a new default user profile, so the one I created using sysprep and the copyprofile command is useless. Microsoft don't support copying over the default user profile as we did in XP, so I now have to script all of the customizations. Right, that's done.

What other crap is there? All the Windows Apps that we don't want in a corporate environment need removing with Powershell. You can remove them easily enough from the start menu, but it only removes them for the logged on user. I want to remove it for all users! Now I've got to figure out how to do this. I can figure out how to remove all of the apps in one go, but I want to keep some. The Powershell commands I've found to remove individual ones for all users don't appear to work, so I've got to do a bit more research into this. Why can't they just be removed like normal programs for all users?

Microsoft seem hell bent on having SkyDrive/OneDrive in trying to sync users files. We don't want this. I've managed to disable this through the registry, but it's another thing I shouldn't really have to go looking into.

Then I find out through playing around, that I can still access Skydrive through the "immersive control panel". FFS. Disable the Windows Live sign in service. Sorted.

Then you have all of the derpy stuff like PIN sign-in, picture passwords and crap like this. These things should automatically be disabled in a domain environment. Again, I have to go to special effort to make this work properly in a business environment.

Windows 7 was great, aside from a few things that didn't get replicated when you used the sysprep copyprofile command, you could deploy the image straight out of the box without having to worry about daft security issues like this.

I have literally spent weeks playing with this, finding things that I don't want (and nor would a lot of other businesses) that are having to be disabled. As I said, it seems like Microsoft are going out of their way to make this the biggest pain to deploy.

If anyone's workplace is considering this, unless they're really desperate, don't bother. It's a complete waste of time.

Let's hope 9 will be a lot better :/

[P.addy]

Stay on 7, Android tablets.

Fuck the system.

[c_dug]

https://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Window+s+life+cycle.+I+saved+this+from+9gag+september+19th_066a36_4174144.png

[JonB]

Windows ME. Oh my dear god, I forgot about that abomination.
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Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it?s worth.

[dabigginger]

I thought it was:
95: good
98: shit
2000: good
ME: shit
XP: good
Vista: shit
7: good
8: FFS

...and why the hell does 8.1 have to install itself as a new O/S? Why not just install it as a service pack? Rather than forcing their ideas on their customers, they need to go out, find out what people want and build something around that. For a company as big as MS, you'd think they'd have more commercial sense.

[P.addy]

[Rogerborg]

[barrkel]

Large corporations see users as pawns / sheep / bovines to be herded into new products to create new empires.

Corporate strategy: the art of forcibly ramming new products down users' throats, to compete with products users might choose if they were allowed to have free will.

There are two solutions.

Give up the futile attempt at having free choice in configuration of your software environment, and become a slave to your Corporation of choice. Follow their lead sheepishly, promptly and slavishly. Even when they change 180 degrees, they should give you a path out of the "old" way. If they don't, sucks to be you - ideally, choose the Corporation that has the best history of backward compatibility if that's more important than consistency, which normally means choosing MS over Apple.

Or forego much modern frippery, and regress to a terminal window, the Unix utilities, emacs / vim, and tools you can control.

I've largely chosen the latter. Cygwin on Windows, Linux as is, ports on OS X. Emacs is the last editor I'm planning on learning to use.
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[rideslikean00...]

Why you'd bother with Windows 8 at all is something of a mystery, other than the speed boost in certain usage cases it was a piece of shit, and 8.1 or whatever subversions will follow are just a futile exercise in turd polishing. All I did was try to make it like Windows 7, until I just relented and used Windows 7.

And even Windows 7, a good solid OS, mostly suffers by comparison next to OS X. All the tweaking I had to do is mostly not needed with OS X cos it's mostly already right out of the box with clean install.
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Previous/Current Bikes
2013 Yamaha YBR-125ED -> 1997 Yamaha YZF-1000R Thunderace -> 2009 Yamaha XJ-6 Diversion -> 2007 Yamaha FZ6 Fazer S2

[Seb]

98 SE was mostly decent, it still had the signs of the memory leak issues that would proceed to cripple ME though.

The whole 8/8.1 thing is a nuisance, for example 8.1 won't see the bios based CoA on lots of machines as well, and no code on oem stickers = tough shit.

Have you tried installing 8.1 manually via the 5 standalone updates? does that still behave in the same manner as a windows store upgrade?
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2010 Triumph 1050 Sprint ST

[Stevie GooGs]

I just had to do a fresh install of windows 7 and thats been the first time since i bought it many moons ago. Windows 8 does not interest me at all, a touch screen interface is all good for tablets but fecking headache for PC.
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Bike Pics! -> My Photography Website

[Rogerborg]

Mmm, the best thing that I can say about 8 / 8.1 on the desktop is that it's possible to hide most of the prod-and-drool noncery.

I really, really hope that Valve doesn't mong up SteamOS and that it takes off big style, because gaming is the only thing keeping a Windows partition alive for me.
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[Andy_Pagin]

One of the problems with Microsoft is that most of their profits come from the 'white goods' consumer mass-market. Basically you're trying to use a chavvy home entertainment O/S as a business tool.

Why does it have to be a Windows based tablet? Do they genuinely need to run stuff that can't be provided by Android/Linux, or is it more of a political issue?
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[P.addy]

[Rogerborg]

Hey, I'm down with all the hep cats and their murder simulators.

https://25.media.tumblr.com/5c1cb92142a2ddc86a77916b2405dc72/tumblr_mxlbrr3tFW1rp7u6ro1_500.gif
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Biking is 1/20th as dangerous as horse riding.
GONE: HN125-8, LF-250B, GPz 305, GPZ 500S, Burgman 400 // RIDING: F650GS (800 twin), Royal Enfield Bullet Electra 500 AVL, Ninja 250R because racebike

[dabigginger]

We went with Windows 8/8.1 because there is a business requirement for a lightweight, highly portable tablet which I can appreciate. The reasons for choosing Windows over Android are mostly political. Basically, any other O/S is out of the question. When I was first approached to do this, I thought it would be no problem. Customizing and creating an image for any previous O/S has never been a problem!

Windows 7 doesn't really work effectively with a touch screen interface. Although the machines will spend 90% of their lives in a docking station and driven by the mouse and keyboard, they need to be practical when out and about.

I've pretty much completed the user configuration (after many weeks of research and faffing about I might add). It's all done by script. As previously mentioned, the 8.1 upgrade sets the default user profile back to out of the box settings. I went and tested everything today to make sure it works as intended. Once I finished this and made a few tweeks to my configuration script, I went and deleted my user profile on the machine and the associated registry key and guess what?! When the user profile is re-created, it is re-created without any of the apps I wanted to keep! If any other users sign in, it works as it should, but re-creating a user profile just doesn't work properly. A little search online shows this seems to be the behavior of 8/8.1 and can I find any kind of way to re-create the user profile properly? No! Why can't the user profile just be re-created as it was before? Re-name the user folder, delete the associated registry entry and everything is as good as new. Bearing in mind this isn't an uncommon thing that IT staff will do, it seems just another way of pissing off the people that will ultimately support the products.

So, if I ever needed to do re-create someone's user profile, unless a better way can be found, it would mean rebuilding the machine (in the assumption that a direct fix for an issue can't be found).

I think the final touch to the image should be to set this as the default wallpaper:

https://dijitul.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Troll.png

[Rogerborg]

[dabigginger]

Redmond best get their shit together for 9...

[chrisw]

[dabigginger]

Ah, my professional experience with the O/S' has only covered:

2000 (briefly)
XP SP2
XP SP3
7
8/8.1

I use the Windows Automated Installation Kit to create my answer files and Windows Deployment Services to deploy, but the images still need to be sysprepped to return it to an out of box experience, reset the SID and create the default user profile. I haven't touched MDT before as the other tools fulfill my needs fine.

[SQL]

I think you can use SCCM to package it and rollitout

[Philly46]

Run 8.1 as my main OS with Start8 and have zero issues. Never see the Metro interface and considering I'm still not paying for an OS I have very little to moan about.
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[dabigginger]

SQL, I think you're right, but we don't have it