Windows 10: At a PC Near You

Now that the school year is getting ready to start, here is a brief look at what to expect when you first log on to Windows 10:

Most everyone in the District has a roaming profile when they logon to the computers.  This roaming profile syncs your desktop, Firefox and Internet Explorer bookmarks, as well as other preferences from one computer to another.  Windows 10 uses a different profile from Windows 7.  The very first time you logon to Windows 10, the computer will need to set up your new profile.  This will take several minutes.  When you get signed on, you will noticed your desktop icons (if you had any) are missing.  For a tour of Windows 10, click here. At this point, there are a couple tasks to do to get you started:

1.       First of all, your desktop items are not gone.  They are in your old roaming profile.  Call the help desk for help in getting those items back.  Remember, every item you put on your desktop slows your logon/out time a little more.  This is an excellent opportunity for you to opt out of having a roaming profile.  Contact the help desk if you wish further information on opting out. Opting out will increase you log on and out times significantly.

2.     Chrome users:  Please sign into Chrome by going to settings in the top right corner of chrome and selecting settings from the drop down menu.

Under the People section, click on Sign in to Chrome.  Follow the prompts.  After you’ve successfully signed in, click on Link Data to bring back your bookmarks and settings.

3.       Once you have setup your computer the way you like it, you need to log off and on again.  This will write your roaming profile up to your J drive.

****** OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS

*  Teachers or or anyone using the TWS (Teacher Work Station) in the classroom, at the end of a class period, should ONLY use the logout option and DO NOT shutdown or reboot/restart the computer. If the computer has received software updates that require a reboot, it will not apply those updates unless or until it is rebooted. Upon reboot, the computer may take several minutes as it applies the changes and it will not be ready to be used and this may cause a situation where the computer will not be ready for the next teacher/class period.

* Your machine is also coming back from summer break and is catching up with Windows updates.  So please be patient when your computer begins to do these updates.  If prompted, select reboot.  Eventually the updates will "catch up" so to speak and happen less often. Some update may require an mandatory reboot and you will have 15 minutes to save your work.

* Login in for the first time can take several minutes. Subsequent logins, to the same computer,  will happen a lot faster. So, log in ahead of time to machines that you normally use and the next time things should happen faster.

* Login times are directly related to the amount of items that you keep on your desktop. Keeping entire folders on your desktop is not a preferred practice. Put them in your J drive and have a shortcut to it on your desktop.

* Talk to the Help Desk and inquire about opting out of Roaming Profiles to reduce your login time. 

* Important advice for your students and/or if you use a computer lab regularly. Students do not have roaming profiles therefore every time they log in, a new local profile gets created. This process takes time (about 2 minutes, but could be longer during busy periods) so please advise your students to login as soon as they come into the lab and preferably, if possible, use the same computer every time. By using the same computer, they will reuse their previously created local profile and their login times could be as quick as 4 seconds.

* There has been reports of MS Office 2016 freezing or crashing.  Disabling graphics acceleration has helped in some cases (The Help Desk can show you how to do this) but is a newly developed bug ( thank you Microsoft for your bug free updates... Not) that we are hoping will get fixed in the near future. If you don't want to deal with it, go back to use the 'old trusty Office 2010