Clear the Windows.Old file on C:

If you're like me and you're using an SSD which may not be too large, you might find that there's a significant chunk of data being used up by the Windows.Old file.  This contains rollback data from your previous installation before upgrading to Windows 10.  If you're not planning on rolling back, then I suggest you clear it up and get rid of that wasted data usage.

To do this, you will need to do the following:

1. Run Disk-Clean Up utility from the Start Menu
2. Click Clean up system files

3. Find Previous Windows installations and tick that

4. Click OK and it will clean up all the data on your C: drive that has been wasted in the Windows.Old file.

Allow BitLocker without a TPM

If you're using a computer which hasn't got a TPM, you can still enable BitLocker on the OS drive.  You will simply need to update the Local Group Policy (or normal Group Policy if you're within a Domain) to reflect the following:

Once done, you will be able to set a password-defined BitLocker on your OS drive.

Windows 10 | Connect to wireless automatically before logging in

A client of mine had a MS Surface running Windows 10.  They were almost 100% wireless and kept running into issues where they'd login to their profile and then it would connect to the wireless.  That's not usually a problem, however in this case it was a roaming profile and caused some issues with connectivity.

To get around this, I was able to save the credentials prior to logging in, which allowed the Surface to connect to the Wireless before they actually go through the login process, and ensure that it has access to a Domain Controller.

Click on the 'WiFi' option from Network Settings

Click Wireless Properties

Click Advanced Settings

Select User Credentials then click Save Credentials.  It will then ask you to type in a username and password which it will then use to authenticate against the wireless prior to logging in.

Note: this isn't a scalable solution, and merely designed to get one or two users up and running on wireless devices.  This will cause problems if the user's password expires as well.

For a scalable solution, you will need to use Group Policy and define a Service Account username and password.

Enable Split Tunnelling | Windows 10 VPN

In older versions of Windows (eg 7/8.1 etc) you were able to enable Split Tunnelling by removing the default gateway IP address from the IPv4 settings of a VPN's properties.  This is now not available on Windows 10 and you can't actually click on the IPv4 properties.

In Windows 10, you now need to enable Split Tunnelling through PowerShell.   It is done with a simple command:

Set-VPNConnection "VPN Name" -SplitTunneling $true

To verify that this was successful, you can type the following command to get the details of your VPN connection:

Get-VPNConnection

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Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Download Hanging | KB3189866

Microsoft has recently released the Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1607 (x64) which a lot of people have been having issues with.  The update is hanging when your workstation tries to download it.

Microsoft are currently looking into getting this resolved, but in the meantime, you can manually download this update from the following location:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=116494&updateid=0405fe13-e4d5-4aff-8cf1-0500f5f673f7

Manually install the update, reboot and you're good to go!

You may need to restart the Windows Update service once you've rebooted if it thinks that it's still downloading the update.

Windows 10 showing as Vista in WSUS

There is a bug with WSUS where Windows 10 machines are showing up as Windows Vista.

There is a hot-fix released by Microsoft, and it can be downloaded here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=51534

Windows 10 Start Menu not responding

Whilst at a client's office rolling out new infrastructure, I noticed that logging into all W10 machines caused some issues with the Start Menu.  Clicking on the Start Menu simply wouldn't do anything.  You could right-click on it without issue, but normal click did nothing.

This started to happen to all computers for all accounts.  I'd confirmed that everything was working well previously, so I started to look into whether it could be a new GPO rolled out or something like that.  Not being able to pin point any GPO which could have caused the issue, I started to investigate why the Start Menu wasn't  working.  Checking Event Logs, it showed that items were trying to register with the Firewall, but failing.

I checked the Services and the Windows Firewall service had actually been disabled.  After enabling this again, and starting it up, everything started to work.  It turns out a technician had gone through each computer and disabled the Windows Firewall service for some reason!

So if anyone has this issue with the W10 start menu, the first thing to check should be the Windows Firewall service!