New Windows 11 PC replacements - "survey"

Question

Planning to replace a large number of PCs at a client, currently running Windows 10.

Client wants to introduce Windows 11 with the PC replacement and I'd like to get an idea of what you guys have experienced rolling out Windows 11 and what you tweak when deploying Windows 11.

With Windows 11 we finally got rid of the Tiles menu but also many other things has changed.

How does ppl react to Windows 11, the centered Start menu, other stuff?

• Do you change the Start menu??

Windows 11 Schema extensions and security settings, anything to be aware of?

Have you noticed applications not running on Windows 11?

Any other general Windows 11 advice?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Hi Makeshhumareshtech-9574,

Acceptance of WIndows 11 has been good in my experience. I have migrated a variety of users and they adopt the changes to the UI after a bit of gentle prompting. I haven't masked the UI to look like Win10 thus far.

If you want to change the start menu, head to Settings > Personalization > Start, where you can tell Windows to stop showing recently installed apps, frequently used apps, and recently opened items in the Start menu, App List, and elsewhere. Experiment with each of these three options to determine which ones to turn on and off. If you turn all three options off, the Recommended section of the Start menu will be empty.

To realign the start button, open Settings > Personalization > Taskbar, then select the Taskbar behaviors option. Use the Taskbar alignment drop-down to change the icons from Center to Left. The Start button, along with the rest of the icons on the Taskbar, will reposition to the bottom left.

This guide will help with Group Policy customisation for Win11:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/customize-start-menu-layout-windows-11

While Microsoft states that Windows 11 will support any application currently supported by Windows 10, it’s best to trust but verify. You might even want to check in advance for some applications. If you depend on third-party antivirus software, you will want to ensure these security software suites are working correctly right out of the gate.

Windows 11 has a built-in anti-malware tool called Windows Defender. Yet, it's not as good at malware detection as the top antiviruses in the industry. Windows Defender is also known for blocking trusted applications.

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Answer 2

Start menu
We did not change it to left (yet) but we may, as a lot of people comment on that. Just a small hurdle but still disturbing to some..

Full right click menu
One small thing we've enabled on Windows 11 is to show the full "Right click menu" as we got a lot of complaints on that

We simply add the following line to the Default user registry at deployment
reg add "HKU\Software\Classes\CLSID{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f /ve

Move over profile
Also consider migrating the user profile settings during deployment to give the users a more homey feeling from the get-go.
For new preinstalled PCs we use User Profile Central (UPC) from EhlerTech.
UPC can grab the users profile remotely from the users existing PC and add the profile to the new PC before handover.

Windows 11 in general
Overall I really like Windows 11 and 95% of what is missing from Windows 10 really was a nuisance and not used by many.
Control panels are still not complete but getting there. (That's more a tec's issue though :-)

Answer 3

Steps for deployment and procedure is more like deploying Windows 10 on Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 devices (if you already done that) but the main challenge is the new requirement for the Windows 11 and most old devices are not compatible with Windows 11, so you won't be able to deploy Windows 11.
In case you want to check readiness, then take a look at:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-endpoint-manager-blog/understanding-readiness-for-windows-11-with-microsoft-endpoint/ba-p/2770866
Then in case the compatibility is not the problem, you may deploy Windows 11 on some of devices and ask users to experience it.
It depends on your day-to-day tasks, and you have let your users to try and share feedback.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

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