All posts tagged upgrade

DirectAccess and Windows 10 Professional

Does Windows 10 Professional Support DirectAccess?

This is a question I’ve received on more than one occasion. For some reason there seems to be a persistent rumor on the Internet that Windows 10 Professional is now a supported client for DirectAccess. I’m not sure where this rumor got started, but I’ll put it to rest right now – Windows 10 Professional is NOT a supported DirectAccess client! DirectAccess still requires Enterprise edition (with two exceptions) to take advantage of DirectAccess for secure remote access.

Supported DirectAccess Clients

The following is a complete list (as of this writing) of client operating systems that support DirectAccess.

  • Windows 10 Enterprise
  • Windows 10 Education
  • Windows 8.1 Enterprise
  • Windows 7 Enterprise
  • Windows 7 Ultimate

DirectAccess and Windows 10 Professional

If you are running a version of Windows that is not Enterprise edition (with the exception of Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 10 Education) DirectAccess will not work. Be careful, because you can still provision non-Enterprise SKUs such as Windows 10 Professional for DirectAccess. All of the DirectAccess settings will be applied without issue and everything will look perfectly normal, but DirectAccess won’t work. The telltale sign on Windows 8.x and Windows 10 clients is that you won’t be able to start the Network Connectivity Assistant (NCA) service (NcaSvc). When you attempt to do so you will receive the following error message:

Failed to start service 'Network Connectivity Assistant (NcaSvc)'

DirectAccess and Windows 10 Professional

Identify OS Version

You can verify the operating system SKU by looking at the output of systeminfo.exe or by going to the control panel under System and Security and clicking System.

DirectAccess and Windows 10 Professional

DirectAccess and Windows 10 Professional

Upgrade from Windows 10 Professional to Enterprise

A new feature introduced in Windows 10 allows you to easily upgrade the product SKU without having to perform an in place upgrade or reinstall the entire operating system from scratch. So, if you have Windows 10 Enterprise licenses and you want to upgrade a Windows 10 Professional device to Enterprise (for example you want to enable your new Surface Pro 4 to use DirectAccess!) you can simply provide the enterprise product license key in Windows 10 to upgrade. You can provide a new product key by navigating to Start | Settings | Update & Security | Activation | Change Product Key, or run changepk.exe from the Run dialog box or the command line.

DirectAccess and Windows 10 Professional

Enter your Windows 10 Enterprise product key and then click Start Upgrade.

DirectAccess and Windows 10 Professional

After the system reboots it will have been upgraded to Enterprise edition and now work as a DirectAccess client.

DirectAccess and Windows 10 Professional

DirectAccess and Windows 10 Professional
Summary

With Windows 10, it’s easy to upgrade from Professional to Enterprise edition by simply providing the Enterprise edition product key. This works great if you have just a few machines to upgrade, but if you are planning to upgrade many machines I would recommend creating a deployment package using the Windows Imaging and Configuration Designer (ICD), which is included with the Windows 10 Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) and can be downloaded here. Once you’ve upgraded your Windows 10 Professional devices to Windows 10 Enterprise you can begin provisioning them for DirectAccess!

DirectAccess consulting services now available! Click here for more details!

18 Comments
by Richard M. Hicks on December 14, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in DirectAccess, Enterprise, Remote Access, Surface Pro, Surface Pro 4, Windows 10
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Posted by Richard M. Hicks on December 14, 2015

https://directaccess.richardhicks.com/2015/12/14/directaccess-and-windows-10-professional/

Windows 10 November Update Available Today

Windows 10 November Update Available TodayToday Microsoft announced the availability of the November Update (formerly Threshold 2) for Windows 10. With this update, Microsoft is now touting Windows 10 build 1511 as “enterprise ready”, with a number of key features and enhancements designed to drive enterprise adoption for the client operating system.

  • Performance Improvements – According to Microsoft, the Windows 10 November Update includes important improvements in performance, improving boot time almost 30% over Windows 7 installed on the same system.
  • Windows Update for Business – Windows Update for Business enables IT to control Windows update within their organization, allowing administrators to roll out updates on their schedule. New features with this service include creating device groups and enabling phased deployment of updates across the organization
  • Windows Store for Business – The Windows Store for Business provides IT with a mechanism to provision and manage apps for Windows 10 devices, both from the Windows Store and their own line-of-business apps.
  • Telemetry Control – Beginning with Windows 10 build 1511, enterprise customers will now have the ability to completely disable all Windows telemetry. Although not recommended, this feature is essential for many organizations to maintain the highest levels of security.

Since Windows 10’s release in late July of this year, enterprise customers have deployed Windows 10 on more than 12 million business PCs. Many organizations who have not yet upgraded are in the planning and pilot stages today, or will be soon. The enterprise adoption rate for Windows 10 continues to accelerate, and no doubt will do so even more with the release of Windows 10 build 1511.

Don’t forget that Windows 10 already includes a number of important security advancements such as Credential Guard to mitigate various credential theft attacks, Device Guard to prevent installation of malicious software, and Windows Hello to strengthen authentication with the use of biometrics. These features, along with the new capabilities and services introduced today, continue to make Windows 10 a compelling client operating system in the enterprise.

Of course the perfect complement to Windows 10 in the enterprise is DirectAccess. To learn more about how to maximize your investment in Windows 10 with DirectAccess, here are some essential references.

In addition, DirectAccess consulting services are also available. More details here.

4 Comments
by Richard M. Hicks on November 12, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in Remote Access, Update, Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by Richard M. Hicks on November 12, 2015

https://directaccess.richardhicks.com/2015/11/12/windows-10-november-update-available-today/