Win 10 to Win 11 upgrade and WSE connection errors fix
This is not a question, I just thought I would put down what worked for me after running into issues when I completed an in place update on my windows 10 pro devices to win 11. Since I’m sure a few people are going to be doing this in the coming weeks I wanted to help out others that might have the same issues I was having with no connection and failures to run launcher apps.
The update was fine, no issues and the connection software still ran, but they were showing offline in the server. I could connect to the apps just fine via their RDP links, but when trying to open the launcher or apps directly via the connector it would fail, these are my steps to fix the issues and get back to online in the server.
- Upgrade to win 11…
- Once back up and running and all updates applied I uninstalled the ‘Client Connector for Windows server Essentials’, no need to uninstall the other piece from Office Maven.
- Reboot
- If you were previously joined to the domain before the upgrade… run this command to set skip domain join. Mike says to remove this afterwards, but not sure why… I’m sure he has his reasons.
reg add “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Server\ClientDeployment” /v SkipDomainJoin /t REG_DWORD /d 1
- Re-run the connector installer from your ‘http://servername/connect’ portal. It should be a simple confirm the computer name, no user-name, no frills installation.
- Reboot
- Re-enable NTLM that win 11 disables
Open up gpedit.msc then navigate to: Computer Configuration → Windows Settings → Security Settings →Local Policies → Security Options
Set the following:-
Network security: Restrict NTLM: Incoming NTLM traffic → Allow all
-
Network security: Restrict NTLM: Outgoing NTLM traffic to remote servers → Allow all
-
Network security: LAN Manager authentication level → Send NTLMv2 response only. Refuse LM & NTLM
-
Reboot and Done
The connector worked and showed up online in the server, but would not actually open the launcher or apps without throwing a NTLM error, once I modified the gpedit.msc settings shown above it then was able to connect fully to the apps and launcher. I’ve read in other areas that these settings may get switched back during various win 11 updates so keep that in mind or make a copy of the registry keys so you can easily put them back as needed if it gets broken. I tried to install the connector and modify NTLM settings in one go, but after the reboot they got switched back so two separate steps works best.
I had no issues with domains or folder re-direction it all worked as before. Hope this helps someone.
-J
- Jeremy asked 5 months ago
- Interesting as I’ve never come across an issue with NTLM when connecting Windows 11 client computers up to an Essentials server (either when the clients were upgraded to Windows 11 from Windows 10 or when using a freshly installed copy of Windows 11). Thanks for sharing with everyone how you managed to resolve the issue though. ;- )
- Maybe it’s something that’s changed on newer versions of windows 11? Not sure, but I was able to replicate it multiple times as the issue.
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When I recently tried to RDP into a WS2016 VM host, I got an error that “Authentication failed because NTLM authentication has been disabled.” This happened a few days after I upgraded to Window 11 24H2. So, like Jeremy reported, it may become a more common issue. This article pretty much confirms it: “Microsoft to disable NTLM by default in future Windows releases”
Microsoft to disable NTLM by default in future Windows releases
For some reason, Jeremy’s group policy settings didn’t quite fix the problem for me. However, following the “Solution for NTLM Authentication Issue” in this Lenovo website did fix the issue:
NTML authentication disabled W11 Pro 24H2
The group policy setting they recommend is to set “Network security: LAN Manager authentication level” to “Send LM & NTLM – use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated.”
- Mick answered 2 weeks ago
- last edited 2 weeks ago
- Interesting… Thanks for sharing your experience and the links. I’m still not seeing any issue in this area over here on our Windows 11 24H2/25H2 clients (i.e., they’re still able to RDP into, as well as connect to, the Essentials servers just fine), but we don’t typically domain join our client computers to the server (rather we use Microsoft’s SkipDomianJoin connection method instead) and so that could be the reason for that. I’ll add a pointer to this thread to the main tutorial just in case others are experiencing the same issue.
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