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.

1. Upgrade to win 11…
2. 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.
3. Reboot
4. 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

5. 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.
6. Reboot
7. 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