Event details

Get answers to your questions about adopting Windows 11 and managing Windows devices across your organization. Find out how to proactively implement and monitor Zero Trust practices. Get tips on keeping devices up to date. Learn how to move forward with cloud-native workloads, even if you have on-premises or hybrid needs.

Windows Office Hours is our continuing series of live Q&A for IT professionals here on Tech Community.

How does it work?

We will have a broad group of product experts, servicing experts, and engineers representing Windows, Microsoft Intune, Configuration Manager, Windows 365, Windows Autopilot, security, public sector, FastTrack, and more. They will be standing by here -- in chat -- to provide guidance, discuss strategies and tactics, and, of course, answer any specific questions you may have.

Post your questions in the Comments early and throughout the one-hour event.

Note: This is a chat-based event. There is no video or live meeting component. Questions and answers will appear in the Comments section below.

Pearl-Angeles
Updated Apr 02, 2025

59 Comments

Comments have been turned off for this event
  • HeyHey16K's avatar
    HeyHey16K
    Iron Contributor

    In Company Portal, if we disable the device "reset" and "rename" options, will that impact/break anything else?

    • Jason_Sandys's avatar
      Jason_Sandys
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      There are no known side-effects for doing this. Is there something specific that you are worried about if doing this?

      • HeyHey16K's avatar
        HeyHey16K
        Iron Contributor

        Hi Jason, no just wanted to hear it from the Pros - thank you 😊

  • HeyHey16K's avatar
    HeyHey16K
    Iron Contributor

    Hey Guys - are there any plans to replace the MS Intune Firewall migration tool that stopped working months ago please? We are reviewing our FW rules but would be great to automatically port them across from GP first (to avoid typos etc.) then tidy them up. Thank you :)

    • Jason_Sandys's avatar
      Jason_Sandys
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      There are no plans today for this. In general, we rarely recommend directly lifting and shifting on-prem policy to the cloud or Intune. I appreciate that some orgs have created a large set of complex firewall rules that will be labor intensive to manually recreate in Intune, but part of moving to the cloud and Intune is rationalizing and simplifying your device configuration to reduce overhead and costs as well as troubleshooting complexity (among other things). I also appreciate that this is easy for me to say but not as easy for you to do, but that is the current status.

      • HeyHey16K's avatar
        HeyHey16K
        Iron Contributor

        Thank you Jason. You can do it for us if you'd like to 😉🙏

  • nlmitchell's avatar
    nlmitchell
    Iron Contributor

    Intune/Patching query...

    Our team (Win11 24H2) have a Windows Update Ring applied through Intune to configure the OS on our devices for 'Windows Insider Release - Preview'. This was working a treat and we were receiving preview OS patches each month before they were released into Retail Channel (all our other devices) on Patch Tuesday.......until......we applied a Quality Updates policy through Intune enabling Windows Hotpatch. Since this was applied, we receive the 'Hotpatch capable' patches each month, but not the preview patches. Is this expected behaviour? We're hoping it just affects Quality Updates (monthly OS cumulatives) and not feature updates as 25H2 is due for preview release next month, or at least it has been May for the last few years.

    We are also in the process of enabling Windows Autopatch and trying to ascertain how it all fits together, and Hotpatch is part of that as well. 

    We like the idea of Hotpatching, 8 months of the year devices receive the security updates with not only a much smaller filesize, but without the need for devices to reboot in order to be fully protected, much less annoying for the end users. The other 4 months they get the usual monthly cumulative patch which does still require a reboot to finalise.

    • EricMoe's avatar
      EricMoe
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      There are a couple of things that you mention in your comment/question so I'll try to address them separately.

      For devices that have configured the "Get the latest updates as soon as they're available", this will configure them to receive the "D" release. Once a device receives a "D" release, it's off the Hotpatching cycle for the quarter. Hotpatching only updates devices that have the baseline "B" release, so once you install the "D" release, you will not receive a Hotpatch the next month.

      For devices in Windows Insider Preview channels, as they get updates, if the update is hotpatch-capable and applies to the device (it has received the B baseline update and has only received hotpatches since then) it should continue to get hotpatching. There is nothing in the Quality Update policy to receive hotpatches that should turn off receiving the "D" release. Those are managed separately from one another. 

      Hotpatching does not involve Windows 11 Feature Updates.

       

      We like the idea of hotpatching too!

      • nlmitchell's avatar
        nlmitchell
        Iron Contributor

        Thanks for coming back to me.

        Devices within our team have an Update Ring policy stating Windows Insider Preview Channel and patch ASAP. These devices have been receiving the '2025-xx Cumulative Update Preview for Windows 11.......' patches - "D" release.

        When we applied the Hotpatch Quality Update policy to them (with the above one still applied also), they no longer receive the Preview patches (D), only the Hotpatch stuff - "B" release. So it does seem that it's overridden the devices receiving the D Release patches.

        I like the idea of hotpatching and really want to adopt the approach, obviously only for Win11 24H2. Device estate approx 5,500 - 500 devices are 24H2 and one good selling point to move the others to 24H2 (scheduled in a couple of weeks) is to bring along Hotpatching as well - just want to make sure i've got it right.

         

        And there's how we integrate everything with Autopatch, more reading needed on my part on that one :-)

    • CaseyB's avatar
      CaseyB
      Iron Contributor

      To tag onto this comment -- for Autopatch, after we activate that in Intune, there is no impact from activation -- we need to populate the groups for Autopatch, before anything would be triggered from a patch perspective?  We use Update Rings today and looking at doing some testing with Autopatch -- any suggestions on the best approach for that?

      • EricMoe's avatar
        EricMoe
        Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

        Hi CaseyB, 

        Start here: Manage Windows Autopatch groups | Microsoft Learn which will walk through how to use and manage Autopatch groups. If you already had Windows Update for Business rings configured, those remain. You can elect to move devices into new rings, or continue using those existing rings. We are trying to reduce the barrier of entry as much as possible.

        One of the biggest advantage of using Autopatch Groups is you can dynamically allocate devices across rings using percentages of a parent group. You don't need to define the group membership explicitly for every ring. That helps reduce admin overhead and makes management long-term a lot easier.

  • ioanpapita's avatar
    ioanpapita
    Occasional Reader

    PAC Validation - No Kerberos Errors in Mixed Environment (CVE-2024-26248 & CVE-2024-29056)

    According to the security updates described in CVE-2024-26248 and CVE-2024-29056: Managing PAC Validation Changes, after installing the April 2025 Windows security updates, support for Compatibility Mode will be removed, and strict PAC validation will be enforced.

    From what I understand, in a mixed environment where domain controllers are not yet updated, but some Windows clients and member servers are updated, Kerberos authentication issues should occur, due to the mismatch in PAC validation behavior.

    However, in our environment, we haven’t seen any authentication failures so far — everything continues to work normally.

    Can someone please help me understand why no errors are occurring yet? Is Compatibility Mode still somehow active on updated clients or servers? Or is there an enforcement delay that needs to be manually triggered?


    Thank you!

    • EricMoe's avatar
      EricMoe
      Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft

      Hi ioanpapita, 

       

      The Enterprise Guidance for PAC Validation is published here: How to manage PAC Validation changes related to CVE-2024-26248 and CVE-2024-29056 - Microsoft Support. Please note that after the January 2025 update, all Windows domain controllers and clients were moved to Enforced mode. If you had existing registry keys on your DCs to override the enforced behavior, that override would stay in effect until the April 2025 update. After the April 2025 update, the registry keys won’t override the enforced behavior. As to why no errors are occurring – that would indicate that you don’t have any cross-forest filtering failures in your environment (which is a good thing).

  • LiXuanChen35's avatar
    LiXuanChen35
    Copper Contributor

    If we are more familiar with the behavioral characteristics of Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7 and Windows XP, I hope that Microsoft will release a system UI customization tool specially built for Windows 10 and Windows 11 as soon as possible, called Windows UI Tweaker, to give Microsoft developers an explanation.

    • Pearl-Angeles's avatar
      Pearl-Angeles
      Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager

      LiXuanChen35 can you share a bit more about what you're trying to achieve and the goals you're working toward? It'll help us figure out how best to support you!