5

Win 10 has some default enabled advertising 'features':

  • Show me the windows welcome experience after updates
  • Suggest ways I can finish setting up my device
  • Show suggested Apps in Start menu

These can be disabled per user with the registry keys: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UserProfileEngagement] "ScoobeSystemSettingEnabled"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ContentDeliveryManager] "SubscribedContent-338388Enabled"=dword:00000000 "SubscribedContent-310093Enabled"=dword:00000000

I need to disable these settings en masse to a number of PC fleets that use different machine management technologies.

  1. Does anyone know an OMA-URI that can manage these settings?
  2. Does anyone know a Per Machine registry key that will disable these features for all users?
  3. If the above two options fail, can I create these keys in .default so that they'll apply to all new users when deploying a machine? ie: [HKEY_USERS.DEFAULT\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ContentDeliveryManager]
Improve this question
7
  • 2
    How about writing a PowerShell script that makes this registry key when launched and deletes itself after that? Then you can put it in the auto start folder, it will launch whenever a person first signs in to a new PC, and is gone after that?
    – DarkDiamond
    Commented Apr 29, 2021 at 6:01
  • I don't love the idea, but it seems like the only way as Win10 currently stands. I can't disable it with .DEFAULT reg entries, and it doesn't like any entries in /policy/ folders which is where all the MDM is stored. V. frustrating.
    – Dom
    Commented May 13, 2021 at 9:14
  • This is always frustrating if there is no "real" solution to something, but I figured that using PowerShell is the best solution for many things if you don't want to rely on third party tools. In addition, PowerShell is quite easy to learn, if you only need the basics, and you can do almost everything with it as it can interact with the whole OS if run with the correct privileges.
    – DarkDiamond
    Commented May 13, 2021 at 9:54
  • 1
    @Dom were you able to solve this? I've already gotten a couple of calls where users proceed after signing in after an update and then get stuck trying to figure out how to sign in with a (non existent) MS account
    – Josh Newman
    Commented Sep 27, 2021 at 3:33
  • @JoshNewman Unfortunately not. The Reg settings are per-user and not available in the MDM catalogue and I couldn't be bothered with a complex powershell thing. At present I disable MS accounts via MDM, for some customers I disable OneDrive backup with MDM, and I'm considering disabling OneDrive entirely via MDM. For other users in small organisations, I pop into System -> Notifications -> And disable the bottom three ticks, for each user, as I set up the user and do their onboarding training.
    – Dom
    Commented Sep 28, 2021 at 4:08

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

The response by @dalija-prasnikar to my tweet thread starting at this tweet made me find your question.

Digging for "reg add" "ScoobeSystemSettingEnabled" "ContentDeliveryManager" revealed Optimizing Windows 10, Build 2004, for a Virtual Desktop role: Default User Settings | Microsoft Learn

That shows how to load and unload the C:\Users\Default\NTUSER.DAT into the registry using a series commands piped to reg.exe from DefaultUserSettings.txt starting with Load HKLM\Temp C:\Users\Default\NTUSER.DAT end ending with Unload HKLM\Temp.

Between loading and unloading are a series of add "HKLM\Temp\.... commands that include your above ScoobeSystemSettingEnabled setting (but different ContentDeliveryManager" settings) now applied to the Default template user on a Windows installation.

The GitHub repository The-Virtual-Desktop-Team/Virtual-Desktop-Optimization-Tool: The script and configuration files in this repository provide an easy method to customize and apply performance related settings to virtual desktop environments. extends on this and has morphed the DefaulUserSettings.txt into DefaultUserSettings.json to be ran from a PowerShell script.

It probably might be generalised to use the parameterised location of the Default user's NTUSER.DAT (Windows can be installed on another drive letter than C:), and might help you in your deployment scenario as it answers your 3rd point "If the above two options fail, can I create these keys in .default so that they'll apply to all new users when deploying a machine?".

A similar solution can be created for any user's NTUSER.DAT: as long as they are not logged on to a machine, a service process with enough rights to their NTUSER.DAT file should be able to access the registry, load their particular NTUSER.DAT into a hive and apply settings.

In due time (see my profile) I plan to write a blog post on this.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .