VMware Horizon Community
BarryUWSEFS
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Windows 1909 Start Menu Changes?

Does anyone know if or how the underpinnings of the Start Menu have changed from 1803 to 1909? We recently upgraded from 7.5.1 to 7.11, and created a new Win 10 1909 Image. The master looks great and I created and imported a custom start layout for the tiles.

The first time I recomposed the VM was great, everything fine. But a subsequent recompose for even the smallest change and the start menu breaks, both the apps and the tiles. If the user profile is deleted, and recreated in a subsequent logon, then the start menu is great again.

In addition, we have two pools from the same image, the only difference being one pool is vGPU enabled. Login from the first pool, and everything is good. Logout. Login from the second pool and the start menu breaks.

This behavior did not happen previously with Win 1803.We have not changed any GPO or any other settings.

We are using Windows roaming profiles, because back when we set this all up on 7.5.1 Persona had serious known issues, one that it wouldn't roam the start menu settings. So Windows Roaming Profiles and redirected folders have been working rock solid for us. We do not have Enterprise so UDE or whatever the latest and greatest is, is not an option.

The issue is definitely something in the profile, because to fix the issue you delete the user profile and allow it to be recreated at next logon. Then it is fine until you recompose or login from a different pool.

Thanks

1 Solution

Accepted Solutions
Mickeybyte2
Hot Shot
Hot Shot
Jump to solution

Stop trying to get roaming profiles working with Windows 10...

MS bought FSLogix last year and it's a great solution for profile storage!

Regards.

Regards, Michiel.

View solution in original post

Reply
0 Kudos
12 Replies
Alex_Romeo
Leadership
Leadership
Jump to solution

Hi,

Yes, I confirm that the start menu has changed in the latest version of Windows 10 Ver.1909

What’s New in Windows 10’s November 2019 Update, Available Now

You can also open a post on Microsoft technet:

Forum Technet

ARomeo

Blog: https://www.aleadmin.it/
BarryUWSEFS
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Hi, yes thanks, I know about the minor functionality change, but I am trying to figure out what's going on under the hood!

Reply
0 Kudos
Alex_Romeo
Leadership
Leadership
Jump to solution

You can also open a post on Microsoft technet:

Forum Technet

Blog: https://www.aleadmin.it/
Reply
0 Kudos
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership
Jump to solution

I'm currently also looking for a solution to this roaming profile issue with 1909. From what I found so far on the Internet, it looks like Microsoft is not really interested helping, nor in providing workarounds.

What I saw is that the start menu appears after some time (sometimes already after a few minutes, sometimes much later), so I first though this may be related to group policies. However, running gpupdate /force (even as an administrator) didn't work. Maybe there's another service that's responsible for this!?

What makes the start menu reappear right away is to reset NTFS permissions on "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu", i.e. propagate existing permissions to children. This however requires elevated permissions, since a "normal" user doesn't have these permissions. What's interesting is that the files within that folder are accessible.

If I find something, I'll post an update.

André

Reply
0 Kudos
Mickeybyte2
Hot Shot
Hot Shot
Jump to solution

Stop trying to get roaming profiles working with Windows 10...

MS bought FSLogix last year and it's a great solution for profile storage!

Regards.

Regards, Michiel.
Reply
0 Kudos
scottjones74
Contributor
Contributor
Jump to solution

You will have the same issue with fslogix.  We are using it and the desktop is fine, but the start menu will only show settings and search starting with the users second login.  So far no fix. 

Reply
0 Kudos
BarryUWSEFS
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

I was finally able to determine that our school has an agreement that covers FSlogix. Previous to this I didn't even know Microsoft had bought the technology, so thank you.

The initial setup was rather easy, and had my first test in a couple hours. The start menu worked great.  I was also able to continue to use our redirected folders so nobody loses data, no data has to be migrated.

With concerns about profile bloat, I started using exclusions from "app-data."  I started with an example redirect.xml file I found. It broke the start menu. I started removing every exclusion that seemed could affect the start menu, with no luck. Due to time constraints I removed every appdata - Microsoft exclusion, and the start menu started working again. I cannot yet say exactly which folder was responsible for breaking the menu, but it sure is obscure.  If profile growth becomes an issue we will revisit the exclusions. But right now everything is working.

So I do not have an answer for traditional Microsoft roaming profiles and 1909. Perhaps this is the breaking point. FSlogix is free with certain Microsoft agreements, including RDS cals,  but I read in a recent release they stopped license checking...

Here is a very succinct article that got me started.

Reply
0 Kudos
BarryUWSEFS
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

I am not having that issue, see my recent post.

Reply
0 Kudos
Mickeybyte2
Hot Shot
Hot Shot
Jump to solution

BarryUWSEFS

Glad you got it working with FSLogix. We are also very happy with this solution. Although I must admit I was also worried about the profile bloat. After using it for about 3 months now on a group of 30 test people I noticed the VHDX files are becoming quite large compared to the data that is actually in it. I even had a user which had a 11GB profile VHDX which contained only 3GB of data... I did find a solution for this also! Look at ShrinkFSL. I've set it up to run evey night on my profile directory and it cleans up very nice (the profile of 11GB was reduced to 3GB).

Just be aware if you're using differencing disks in your FSLogix setup (which makes a RW.vhdx during use and merges it after user logs off) do not use this utility cause it breaks the relation between the base and the differencing disk.

Next thing I'll setup now is to move the profiles to a new WIndows 2019 server and setup deduplication on the volume where the profiles are stored to even further reduce the storage usage.

I also split up the profile data and the Office data. If there are issues with some Office data, the Office data container can be deleted without loosing information, it just all cache/search data that can be recoverd from the online services automatically.

FSLogix already excludes lots of default temporary files. If you are interested I've attached our Redirections.xml which I also customized, mostly to exclude the cache folders of Chrome and Edge (Chromium).

Regards.

Regards, Michiel.
BarryUWSEFS
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Thanks for the info. When I open the redirections.zip it is empty, for some reason. Right now my redirection mostly just has some Chrome exclusions. We are going to keep an eye on profile bloat. Our desktops are for student labs and classes rather than day to day personal PC's, so I am not expecting a lot of profile bloat, but we will see. We have also previously redirected desktop, documents and download folders, and we are still doing that, so they are not in the profile. I also watched my profile balloon by 2GB when I opened Outlook, so I added the Office admx to the image and restricted the email download to three months, which is fine for these being classroom and lab computers. Class starts tomorrow, so I only had a few days to get FSlogix up, running and tested. Looking forward to further research into many of the options. Thanks for the tips, I'll check out ShrinkFSL.

Reply
0 Kudos
Mickeybyte2
Hot Shot
Hot Shot
Jump to solution

I just tried the download and it seems to works fine with me.

Regards, Michiel.
Reply
0 Kudos
BarryUWSEFS
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
Jump to solution

Chrome was zapping it, downloaded fine with IE, Thanks!  Very helpful.

Reply
0 Kudos