I thought it was worth sharing a quick Blog that some of you might find useful. We have been creating and deploying Windows 10 builds for a few years now and generally customers are starting to understand the release patterns that Microsoft use, so can choose whether or not to keep up with the latest and greatest, or renew on a schedule, changing the version of windows that you deploy annually, so say moving from 1803 release to 1903.

We are also pretty efficient at creating what is termed as a "DeBloat" script, which is designed to remove from Windows the features and functions that you do not want your end users to access on their systems. But as with most things Microsoft, they like to throw in the odd curve ball to keep us on our toes. First it was Windows update, remember in windows 7 when you used to be able to deploy a script to turn off local updates? Well we learned pretty quickly with Windows 10 that it doesn't matter how many times you turn off the function, Microsoft will find a way to turn it back on, thus ensuring that by "Hook of by Crook" users fall into the auto update trap and Microsoft gets to maintain its revenue stream!!

Well another one of the curve balls that I thought you may like to know about is, in building your debloat script to use for example on a 1903 release, you may have everything set as you want, however in the next release we find that Microsoft have a habit of renaming universal apps, so in referring to an app in 1903 vernacular, this may no longer work in 1909 as the app has changed name subtly.

Our recommendation for dealing with this is two fold.

First, document what is going on in your build, the functions, features and apps that you are disabling or hiding and for each new build check the spelling and syntax.

Second, test, test and test again, make sure that your new build does not suddenly have apps added back in that you hid from the user 2 years ago.

And if in any doubt about any of the above, reach out and contact Quest pro services or an experienced partner for assistance.

Other Indigo Mountain Products and Services

BarKode for KACE - Enabling effective Asset Management Best Practice

For more information about BarKode click here or download a demo appliance here

DASHboard for KACE - Your Metrics, Your Way, Your DASHboard

For more information about DASHboard  click here

ServiceNow/ KACE integration appliance - Keep your KACE Devices and ServiceNow CI's sync'd

For more Information click here or download a demo appliance here

KACE Benchmark Survey

For the SMA version click here, for the SD Version click here