TAM ON WIN10

[Hans Manhave]

I guess I will find a 32bit Office license before I put the hardware into service.

On one of my own machines, I played around with another Win10Pro and a Win10Enterprise installation.  I saw no difference between 10Pro and 10Ent.  There are even different Enterprise versions.  Will leave the Enterprise versions, I think.  They have to be paid annually as part of volume and do not appear to add anything significant for this small operation.  They also install with a lot of unneeded stuff.  I wasn't sure if the hardware was going to handle W10, but it did fine.

It was quite an experience creating bootable USBdrives.  All I had was either too large (64 GB) or too small (1GB) and Enterprise wouldn't fit on a DVD.  An 8GB would have been perfect.  Fortunately, there are utilities (Rufus) that nicely handle the larger sizes and just reduce them to 32GB.

If anyone has a suggestion on the cheapest way to acquire a "non-upgrade-from-previous-version" license for Win10Pro, I would appreciate the help.  Upgrade versions can still be found "free", but I like to continuously modify my own machine for a while and not have it overly tied to hardware, if that makes sense.  Considering a SSD instead of the whirly thingy.  Older laptop sure runs hot, but that doesn't appear to be a problem.

[Bob]

I will say this is why we left Applied.  We can use any flavor of Office or any MS product.  Our AMS is updated once a month if not twice sometimes fixes or adding more features.  No waiting until next version or some future request.  Users make enhancement request, they update based on demand of user and all users get input.  We don't wait months or years and support anything in today's market.  The accounting is more work but servicing clients is far more automated and easier, especially renewals and certs so I can accept that hit.  Not difficult just more steps in making a deposit that could be better. If we have any serious issue they fix that day.  Love their support.  No excuses they just act and do so quickly.   

Miss seeing all you guys but I do not miss Applied products at all when I keep reading the same old issues.  Always waiting on Applied and what they support.  Then posting work arounds until they fix it or add it.

Only reason I don't push Nexsure to you all yet is they still depend on IE module (rewriting support all browsers) for accounting.  Can use other browsers now.  Once this is completed I will recommend to you all.  Already supporting all browsers for servicing just the accounting is the last part, should be done by end of year I think.  Some of the names you know on ASCnet and this forum have come over.  I see them on our user forums which now is using TEAMS.  When this COVID thing over and we can once again have group meetings, I look forward to seeing them.

If you all ever get back to Vegas I will join you all.  I hope to be moving back to Phoenix come April.  Short drive. 

[Billy Welsh]

Poor Accounting, always the last to be asked to dance. 

[Hans Manhave]

While the forum search function is in repair: what is the fix for the Microsoft Visual Basic "Run-time error '429': Class not registered   error?

[Hans Manhave]

Installed 32bit Office.  TAM/Word interface now appears to work.  Some day, I too will have the latest and greatest.  Until then, we keep plugging. 

While the forum search function is in repair: what is the fix for the Microsoft Visual Basic "Run-time error '429': Class not registered   error?

[Jeff Golas]

Hans, just seeing this so see my notes below in red:

I guess I will find a 32bit Office license before I put the hardware into service.

On one of my own machines, I played around with another Win10Pro and a Win10Enterprise installation.  I saw no difference between 10Pro and 10Ent.  There are even different Enterprise versions.  Will leave the Enterprise versions, I think.  They have to be paid annually as part of volume and do not appear to add anything significant for this small operation.  They also install with a lot of unneeded stuff.  I wasn't sure if the hardware was going to handle W10, but it did fine.

Fundamentally there's not much mechanical difference, however, what you get are a lot more rights. For example, If you use a corporate-grade deployment system like MDT (free), you can customize a lot more about the computer like start menu, etc as part of the deployment, whereas with Pro you don't have that luxury. Using MDT would even solve your USB/DVD conundrum as it boots right off the network. FYI though, you DO need at least one "open license" of Pro in order to unlock the ability to download the ISOs for corporate use. Using the "media creation tool" is mostly for home PCs and technically that install is "retail", not "corporate".

Looking forward, especially in current times, Microsoft is pushing for more of an Apple-like experience; using "AutoPilot" to basically configure a computer that a user simply takes right out of the box. More info and video here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/windows-autopilot/windows-autopilot


It was quite an experience creating bootable USBdrives.  All I had was either too large (64 GB) or too small (1GB) and Enterprise wouldn't fit on a DVD.  An 8GB would have been perfect.  Fortunately, there are utilities (Rufus) that nicely handle the larger sizes and just reduce them to 32GB.

This shouldn't have been a problem? Never had an issue with a USB key being too big. WIndows 10 can literally handle terabyte and likely even petabyte-grade partitions. I wonder if you ran into this though (this is my own web site: https://www.junknet.net/2019/08/09/windows-10-media-creation-tool-errors-out/

If anyone has a suggestion on the cheapest way to acquire a "non-upgrade-from-previous-version" license for Win10Pro, I would appreciate the help.  Upgrade versions can still be found "free", but I like to continuously modify my own machine for a while and not have it overly tied to hardware, if that makes sense.  Considering a SSD instead of the whirly thingy.  Older laptop sure runs hot, but that doesn't appear to be a problem.

The license is usually tied to a token thats embedded in the bios now, hence why you usually don't enter product keys anymore. That said, Microsoft still allows for a Windows 7 computer to be upgraded to Windows 10 (using a Win7 product key from the licnse sticker). I can't see why they wouldn't, the gain from a Win10 install far outweighs the cost of trying to support older products.

You can buy Windows licenses retail if you needed them, for example of upgrading a computer that's Vista or older. But that's some old sctuff!

You also don't need a new license, etc to install an SSD and re-install Windows...again its linked to essentially a serial # on the motherboard, not the hardware like it used to. An SSD will wake up any old computer by a very very noticable factor; considering how cheap they've gotten its a no-brainer, again even older laptops, etc get MUCH faster with an SSD, and in a lot of cases you can use software like CloneZilla or Acronis or others to just dump the 1s and 0s off your old drive to an SSD, or re-install if that tickles your fancy. You won't have a problem with licensing.

[Jeff Golas]

Also, how does one install an ADMX module.  I don't have one yet, but somewhere I saw I would want one for domain/directory management with Server2008R2?

There's videos and what not out there, but basically on your domain controller, usually under sysvol (essentially the storage of your domain) there's folders for ADML and ADMX files, which build up your group policies. You would always want to make a backup copies of your existing files, and then overwrite them with all the latest ADML/ADMX files (in their respective folders), which essentially gives you the latest pile-o-group policies.

[Jeff Golas]

I will say this is why we left Applied.  We can use any flavor of Office or any MS product.  Our AMS is updated once a month if not twice sometimes fixes or adding more features.  No waiting until next version or some future request.  Users make enhancement request, they update based on demand of user and all users get input.  We don't wait months or years and support anything in today's market.  The accounting is more work but servicing clients is far more automated and easier, especially renewals and certs so I can accept that hit.  Not difficult just more steps in making a deposit that could be better. If we have any serious issue they fix that day.  Love their support.  No excuses they just act and do so quickly.   

Miss seeing all you guys but I do not miss Applied products at all when I keep reading the same old issues.  Always waiting on Applied and what they support.  Then posting work arounds until they fix it or add it.

Only reason I don't push Nexsure to you all yet is they still depend on IE module (rewriting support all browsers) for accounting.  Can use other browsers now.  Once this is completed I will recommend to you all.  Already supporting all browsers for servicing just the accounting is the last part, should be done by end of year I think.  Some of the names you know on ASCnet and this forum have come over.  I see them on our user forums which now is using TEAMS.  When this COVID thing over and we can once again have group meetings, I look forward to seeing them.

If you all ever get back to Vegas I will join you all.  I hope to be moving back to Phoenix come April.  Short drive. 

While I wholeheartedly agree that Applied tends to be behind the times, sometimes by years, in this case it was only very recently (at least year's Ignite conference) that Microsoft themselves suggested using the 64 bit version of Office. It mainly has to do with plugin support; most plugins were written for 32 bit architecture, Applied's included. I run 32 bit office across the board and likely would still need to if I didn't have to deal with Applied.

The 32bit vs 64bit thing refers to how much ram a particular piece of software can access; 32 bits I think gives you up to 4 gig of ram (doin't quote me on this), 64 bit gets you...an order of a lot more. That means Word.exe could use say, 6 GIGS of ram if it needed it.

Unless you're working with 900 Page gold-plated Word docs or Excel sheets with millions of rows, you'd likely never need a 64 bit office. I can see Powerpoint being the only real ram hog with its media components.

OH and on the IE thing - the main thing about IE is it's proprietary "ActiveX" technology, which somehow still lingers on. That said, Microsoft's latest version of Edge is now a Chromium-based browser that supposedly will load IE if a page requires IE technology, yet defaults for the chromium engine for everything else. Its a noble thought, but I'll give it some time to simmer before I start down that path.

[Billy Welsh]

Within the last 6-9 months, I have gone the free upgrade route on 2 different WIN 7 PC's.  If you Google it, there are roadmaps out there - it is not obvious by going straight to M$.

The 1st round was at home, which went really well.  Took a lot of time, but no hiccups on the install.  All my previously installed apps and devices still worked on WIN10.  That said, being this far into it, I have noticed serious performance degradation with the spinning thingy.  I had already maxed out the RAM before going to WIN10, and obviously that is not enough as it must be using a very large swap file.  I have an SSD to install, though I am waiting on that because I may score a retired laptop from the office that is much younger than what I have now and it already has a SSD.  So I may be able to return that to Crucial for a refund.

The 2nd round was on a mostly retired desktop at the office, which did not go as smoothly.  Had some driver and BIOS issues that I had to slug through before M$ would finally complete the install.  End result was the same - successful install and all necessary apps & devices operational.  I say "necessary" as I am not using every single thing on it that I previously did.  Keeping it around for a couple of legacy apps that I did not want to try and install on my new laptop - not worth the trouble.

[Bob]

OH and on the IE thing - the main thing about IE is it's proprietary "ActiveX" technology, which somehow still lingers on. That said, Microsoft's latest version of Edge is now a Chromium-based browser that supposedly will load IE if a page requires IE technology, yet defaults for the chromium engine for everything else. Its a noble thought, but I'll give it some time to simmer before I start down that path.

Nexsure hasn't said anything yet perhaps some work still going on but I tried Edge and you are correct.  Everything works where active X is concerned so far.  Thanks Jeff!

[Hans Manhave]

Yet one more issue.  Possibly a network interface problem?  "Could not read at least 8 bytes at offset 0 in "G:\TAM\TFILE_W.NDX": Error 59: An unexpected network error occurred.

The card does not go to sleep, neither does the computer, no screen saver.  I set the network card speed to 1Gb up/down instead of "auto". 

Anything else to adjust?  I have no idea yet if the above has now fixed it.  It seems to happen when the user is away from the terminal.

[Hans Manhave]

Any thoughts on this at all? 

Only thing I could find on Applied's KB, Artical 000019512.  Relates to Windows 7, not 10. 

sc config lanmanworkstation depend= bowser/mrxsmb10/nsi
sc config mrxsmb20 start= disabled

I have no idea what the above does so I have not implemented it.  Comments welcome.

Yet one more issue.  Possibly a network interface problem?  "Could not read at least 8 bytes at offset 0 in "G:\TAM\TFILE_W.NDX": Error 59: An unexpected network error occurred.

The card does not go to sleep, neither does the computer, no screen saver.  I set the network card speed to 1Gb up/down instead of "auto". 

Anything else to adjust?  I have no idea yet if the above has now fixed it.  It seems to happen when the user is away from the terminal.

[Mark]

Any thoughts on this at all? 

Only thing I could find on Applied's KB, Artical 000019512.  Relates to Windows 7, not 10. 

sc config lanmanworkstation depend= bowser/mrxsmb10/nsi
sc config mrxsmb20 start= disabled

I have no idea what the above does so I have not implemented it.  Comments welcome.

Looks like it probably turns off SMB version 2.  And maybe also version 1?

[Hans Manhave]

Thank you.

I turned off SMB3 which also turned off SMB2. 

There appeared to be a hint of time-out/sleep because the station was fine for a while.  The worker left TAM open and returned 30-45 minutes later to work on it some more.  Then it would error.   So, I also made sure the Dell switch had all the green features turned off.  Maybe Win10 drivers are "smarter" than Win7 and respond differently.  A Win7 station On the same connection never had this problem.  The operator adjusted by closing out when leaving the station so I am yet unsure if anything was resolved.  Time will tell.

I have no idea what features we are missing by now SMB 2/3 is turned off.

[Mark]

It's been a few years since TAM for me, but I don't think you want to downgrade SMB all the way to SMBv1.  I'd check the support docs on that.