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The biggest issue we have to use autopilot is to get the device in a "known state". Hardware vendors put devices on the shelf with bloatware/marketing stuf/etc. on the devices that potentially can create issues during autopilot. To get those devices into a "known state" we need to reimage those. That is a very time consuming process and highly undesirable.
Is there something coming that brings the device to te latest Windows build (desired) without bloatware during pre provisioning? (please say yes :P)
- In our environment new devices coming with bloatfree OS directly from Lenovo & Dell (extra costs). This doesn‘t work when buying from the store near buy. To get a fresh OS I recommend OSDcloud from David S. It downloads/installs official business version of Win10 or 11 directly from MS source and injects drivers from Dell,Lenovo,HP,Microsoft,VMware from vendor sources based on hardware. You just need 8GB USB pendrive and the custom script is even possible stored in Azure storage account …
- Thanks for the live reply on this one. Regarding to the bloatware side, it would be nice to have a clean image install possibility, I would say during pre provisioning or maybe even during user provisioning. I believe vendor tooling should be secured by deploying them through Intune. That I would like to manage as an IT department.
- Hung_Dang
Microsoft
We're investigating installing OS updates during the Autopilot flow (i.e., moving the OS forward to a desired version). Moving the OS back to a supported version is very hard, including inventorying OS images, drivers, firmware, etc. With respect to bloatware, we did have an idea of offering an option to reset the device with the option to remove bloatware during the Autopilot process. We've never ranked it too high, since that's a horribly long process to do a reset, and would be a bad experience for the end user. If you have other ideas or thoughts, we're open to them, too.- We use MDT to reimage the devices. It is by far the fastest approach but I don't want to spend that time on a device. It's a shame that vendors are only focused on marketing instead of listening to business desires.
- Jason_SandysThere are three things to offer here. The first is to talk to your OEM/vendor as most offer devices without this extra software installed. As for removing this software on devices that you may already have, this is the primary purpose for Fresh Start. This does require you to boot the device into Windows to initiate the Fresh Start though. For devices with a relatively new build of Windows 10, you can also use the cloud download option (I can't quickly find a link for this option at the moment).
- The talks with the OEM's are there and delivery of those devices take longer. And in The Netherlands no one has the patience to wait :P. Fresh start is a time consuming process. We use MDT now to get the device into the state that is needed for the specific customer. The power of autopilot is the zero touch part, but that is so dependent on the state of the device. If a new device for whatever reason isn't in this known state that Intune can work with, the zero touch part is over and IT needs to do something to get that device into the known state. It is a major issue that vendors really do not get. Money needs to be made so we install a load of marketing stuff is their way of thinking. I have hope it will change but it feels more like dreaming.... 😞
- Jason_SandysI concur. It's a complex, mostly non-technical problem that has many owners and responsible parties and thus we cannot fully address (or solve) it without others contributing here as well in a uniform manner. Keep in mind also, that Microsoft SUrface devices come free of any additional software. Just food for thought.
