Windows 10 now, by default, denies an SMB client from connecting to an SMB server with “guest access”. See:
The temporary fix is to change the registry to allow guest account access
In 2018 we started using “Windows to Go” on externally boot-able disks to provide the “windows” half of a dual-boot mac. To make this work you need to do the following …
1) Purchase really fast external SSD drives of sufficient size. We choose 250 GBs Samsung T3 drives like:
https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/portable-solid-state-drives/portable-ssd-t3-250gb-mu-pt250b-am/
2) Create your windows environment on a computer that has a removable internal SSD drive. Check this carefully before you begin as most new hardware is coming with SSD system drives soldered to the motherboard! Also be sure that your image is “sysprepped”! See additional tips on preparing a system for imaging/cloning at: https://sites.williams.edu/lj1/labs/windows-10-imagining-tips/
3) Once sysprep has run and shutdown the system, remove the internal hard drive from the computer. Using a sata to usb hard drive docking station like: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=sata+to+usb+Hard+Drive+Docking+Station&i=electronics&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
Mount the sysprepped, internal drive on a different computer that has Microsoft WAIK installed. (Use the version of WAIK that matches the Windows version you are cloning!)
4) Attach another external SSD drive just regularly formatted for windows data. This will be a “Scratch” drive.
5) Run Windows update on your computer for any updates that could interrupt your process!
6) Set your Power and Sleep settings to NEVER sleep either computer or display. This process can take a long time!
7) Now determine all your drive letters. I will use C:\ for the current system where everything is attached, E:\ for the internal drive to take an image from in the drive dock, and S:\ for the scratch disk.
8) Create some directories. You will want to create:
C:\MyImageDir …. to receive the wim image you will be creating
S:\Scratch …. to hold the scratch files
9) With WAIK installed, the internal drive from your system to be cloned, and your scratch drive all attached ….
Find the Windows Kits in the Start Menu then open “Deployment and Imaging Tools Environment” with right-click and “Run as Administrator”. This opens a command window with elevated privileges.
10) To create the wim image in the opened command window you opened above, enter this command:
DISM /Capture-image /ImageFile:C:\MyImageDir\MyImage.wim /CaptureDir:E:\ /Name:"SomeNameForMyImage" /ScratchDir:S:\Scratch\
11) Wait a really, really long time ! Eventually you will see “Saving Image …” with a percentage in that command window.
12) Once that wim image is complete, you can use it as input to the Windows To Go disk creation process.
Apparently, with Windows 10 LTSC version 1809 setting the Start Menu layout in the Profile user account no longer sticks through sysprep setup. I have, however, found another way to set the start menu layout:
1) Configure the start menu the way you want it in the Profile User
2) Open a powershell window
3) Export the start menu layout with:
Export-StartLayout -UseDesktopApplicationID -Path PathAndFileName.xml
To import this layout on the target system(s) use the following in a batch script:
PowerShell.exe -Command "& {Import-StartLayout -LayoutPath PathAndFileName.xml -MountPath c:\}"
Or in an admin powershell window just:
Import-StartLayout -LayoutPath PathAndFileName.xml -MountPath c:\
See also:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/customize-and-export-start-layout
And for even more specifics See:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/start-layout-xml-desktop
When building a Windows PE (Preinstall Environment) or prepping systems to be imaged and cloned you are going to need a set of tools in the Windows ADK (or older versions of Windows AIK). The trick is that you have to use the correct version of these tools that matches the version of the Windows OS that you eventually want to deploy.
First find which version of the Windows OS you are planning to deploy. Right click on the start menu and select “System”. Find your system version in the “Windows Specifications” section near the bottom of the window.
Next, head over to the Microsoft Windows ADK website and download the corresponding ADK.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/get-started/adk-install
Once downloaded, go on to install the tools. Accepting the defaults is probably your best bet at least for your first try at this.
gpresult /h <path>outputfile.html
for /F “tokens=3 delims=: ” %%H in (‘sc query “MyServiceName” ^| findstr ” STATE”‘) do (
if /I “%%H” NEQ “RUNNING” (
REM Put your code you want to execute here
REM For example, the following line
net start “MyServiceName”
))
Apparently windows 10 changed the windows 10 log format and you now need to run a power shell command to generate the log file as a text file that normal humans can read.
Open Powershell with “Run as Administrator”
give the command:
Get-WindowsUpdateLog
Then wait until all the log files have been found and parsed and you get the PowerShell command prompt back. Below is an example.
If you find that your windows update log goes back to the beginning of time and the resulting text log file is too large to read, you can temporarily move older log files from C:\Windows\Logs\WindowsUpdate
More details see: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3036646/how-to-read-windows-update-logs-in-windows-10-version-1607
PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-WindowsUpdateLog
Converting C:\Windows\logs\WindowsUpdate into C:\Users\labadmin\Desktop\WindowsUpdate.log …
Input
—————-
File(s):
C:\Windows\logs\WindowsUpdate\WindowsUpdate.20171011.120412.263.1.etl0.00%100.00%
Output
—————-
DumpFile: C:\Users\labadmin\AppData\Local\Temp\WindowsUpdateLog\wuetl.CSV.tmp.00000The command completed successfully.
WindowsUpdate.log written to C:\Users\labadmin\Desktop\WindowsUpdate.log
PS C:\Windows\system32>
List current filetype associations with these two different commands:
ftype
or
assoc
Change or create new ones:
Open an elevated command prompt.
Example:
FTYPE MyCustomType=C:\Program Files\MyCustomProgram\MyProg.exe “%1”
ASSOC .custom=MyCustomType
These commands can be issued from the KACE server. See the SPSS example there.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/929135/how-to-perform-a-clean-boot-in-windows
Use msconfig to disable all non-Microsoft “Services” and “Startup” from starting
After booting clean, use msconfig to set your computer back to “Normal” boot.
There is apparently a way to delete accounts on systems that haven’t been used in over 30 days with an AD Group Policy setting. I found that this GP setting did not work on the Windows 10 systems I manage. Also, even if it did work, there are a few accounts on these systems that I do not want deleted even if they haven’t been used in months. Therefore, I came up with a powershell script based on many other people’s work that deletes user accounts and profiles that haven’t been used in over 30 days.
Download powershell script to delete 30 day unused user accounts and user profiles
Before running this script on your systems, edit it with a script editor to review the details within the script!!!
To run this script, I also recommend you open an administrative command prompt and give the commands:
cd c:\users
dir /od /ta
This will give you a sorted list of the accounts and the last time the account profile was accessed. You can compare that list to the accounts that will be deleted when running the script. Note that if the list of users to delete is long, you may get quota violations when running the script. When this happens I reboot and run the script again.
To run the script open a powershell window with “run as administrator” and run the script from whatever directory you have saved it in. When running the script be sure to check the list of accounts about to be deleted for any accounts you don’t want to delete. If you see any, you can exit the script as instructed and then edit the script to add the accounts you don’t want deleted to the line indicated in the script.
——————————-
On the windows systems I manage I have already pre-loaded my private version of the script in a specific folder so the steps to run this are:
set-executionpolicy unrestricted
C:\williams\DeleteOldUsers.ps1
set-executionpolicy undefined