Windows 10
Better Windows Updates For Everyone
· ☕ 4 min read
In this post I’m going to show how to quickly configure Windows Updates so that you only receive important security updates. We’ll cover Home and Pro/Enterprise users of both Windows 10 and Windows 11. These are also the settings I use myself and recommend for most users. These settings may also be helpful for IT admins. Set Active Hours - Windows 10 By default Active Hours are configured to be automatic but personally I think it’s better to set them manually.

Deploy Windows 10 21H2 Reference Image
· ☕ 13 min read
News and Updates An important update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released. This update fixes a boot loop issue. Download the update here. In this article as with my previous ones we will walk through configuring Microsoft Deployment Toolkit to deploy the reference image created in the previous article: Build and Capture Windows 10 21H2 Reference Image Installing the MDT Update: MDT_KB4564442 Extract the files from the self-extracting archive and copy them to %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Deployment Toolkit\Templates\Distribution\Tools replacing the existing files.

Build and Capture Windows 10 21H2 Reference Image
· ☕ 8 min read
News and Updates An important update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released. This update fixes a boot loop issue. Download the update here. In this article as with my previous ones we will walk through installing and configuring Microsoft Deployment Toolkit to build and capture a reference image of Windows 10 21H2 using a Hyper-V Virtual Machine. It’s assumed that you have a server or PC ready to install MDT and create a file share for MDT to build the image with.

Disable The News and Interests Bar in Windows 10
· ☕ 2 min read
The New News and Interests Bar for Windows 10 In the June updates for Windows 10 the News and interests bar has been rolled out to Windows 10 and is enabled by default. If you want to disable it as a user, it’s easily done by right-clicking on the Taskbar > News and Interests > Turn off. Job done. 👍 Registry The registry entry for the setting is per-user and is located here:

Deploy Windows 10 21H1 Reference Image
· ☕ 14 min read
News and Updates An update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released: This update fixes a boot loop issue. Details on how to install it are on Michael Niehaus' blog post here and you can download the fix here. Installation instructions will also be in the walkthrough below. NOTE: If you have existing shares you will need to copy the files from the extracted update to %DeployRoot%\Tools and overwrite the existing files in all shares.

Build and Capture Windows 10 21H1 Reference Image
· ☕ 10 min read
News and Updates An update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released: This update fixes a boot loop issue. Details on how to install it are on Michael Niehaus' blog post here and you can download the fix here. Installation instructions will also be in the walkthrough below. NOTE: If you have existing shares you will need to copy the files from the extracted update to %DeployRoot%\Tools and overwrite the existing files in all shares.

Disable Network Discovery in Windows 10/11
· ☕ 4 min read
Fully disabling Network Discovery in Windows 10 using Group Policy To properly disable Network Discovery in Windows 10 in a way that the user cannot easily re-enable we must create some firewall rules and prevent some services from running on start-up. We can do both things using Group Policy. Firewall Rules Create a new Group Policy or use an existing one that takes effect on computer objects. Go to Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Windows Firewall with Advanced Security.

Start Menu and Taskbar Customisation
· ☕ 3 min read
For Windows 11 please check out this post It’s been a long while since I last posted about how to customise the Windows 10 Start Menu and Taskbar for new users when deploying images, so it’s time to fix that! The first thing we need to do is setup what we want our Start Menu to look like and export it. Log on to a Windows 10 machine that has all of the software you want to be pinned on the Start Menu layout and customise the Start Menu as you want it.

Deploy Windows 10 20H2 Reference Image
· ☕ 14 min read
News and Updates An update for Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT_KB4564442) has been released: This update fixes a boot loop issue. Details on how to install it are on Michael Niehaus' blog post here. and you can download the fix here. Installation instructions will also be in the walkthrough below. NOTE: If you have existing shares you will need to copy the files from the extracted update to %DeployRoot%\Tools and overwrite the existing files in all shares.