Can you Switch an existing W10 Home Install over to S Mode?

Berton said:

I did get her HP Envy mfp installed using Wireless Direct on it.

I see this being a major problem with certain hardware drivers that only install via an .exe

e.g. Graphics card drivers (AMD/Nvidia), AIO/Printer/Scanner setup. Even if the files can be extracted to .inf style installation the device manager is still an old non-Modern UI component.

Some sound and network drivers are the same (a universal setup file which installs device specific components).

Also, I have set my PC to 'metered network' and I can't install the Realtek Audio Control app.

winactive said:

I see this being a major problem with certain hardware drivers that only install via an .exe.

Not really as you can add the driver to the .wim before you install it or it could be updated via WU.

As far as I can make any sense of it at all, S mode isn't meant for home users - it is meant for establishments with lots of laptops that they don't want the students to mess up - just let them run a small set of sandboxed apps like a Chromebook. What would be a better solution is to make a proper guest mode that deletes the users home directory when they sign off but S mode has the advantage of pushing the Store.

It will come to nothing though - like RT, software is just too limited at the moment. Perhaps in a few years if the Win32 > UWP thing works and you have Office and other important software available in the Store. We will see.

alphanumeric said:

No, that is not S Mode. And if your talking about the "Only Install Apps from the Microsoft Store" setting in Settings > Update & Security > For Developers. That's the stock setting if your not a developer. All it does is prevent side loading untrusted Apps. It does not stop you from installing any other Apps from other sources or programs.

On my machine I have settings/Apps/apps and features set to 'Allow apps from the store only' in the admin account. For all third party apps installation or updates I have to give an admin permission 'yes' to whitelist it every time.


In a user account I don't get that apps and features 'Allow apps from the store only' option. All settings changes/ third party et al needs elevated admin password.
So to lock down a machine (say an employee laptop) to make it a bit more chromebook like without going as draconian as full on 'S' mode, that would work would it not?
Just don't tell the 'user' what the admin password is and they can't fiddle with settings or install third party apps?
(And of course all reversible in the admin account.)

alphanumeric said:

Ah Ok, that wasn't the setting I was looking at. Mine is set to Allow apps from anywhere. That may be a good compromise to full on S Mode. I only have the one admin account and don't have the ambition to mess with that setting. I haven't installed an App from the store in a long long time. And I actually cleared out some of the useless (to me) deadwood with powershell.

I have it all pretty stock W10, I can't think of any extra store apps I've installed recently. I did it that way to make a clean OS install relatively painless if needed (done it once so far in well under an hour.)

Third party apps like Chrome browser will sync settings anyway so reinstallation is a two minute job.

The reason I switched the 'store only' option on was just in case I got hit with a nasty in admin mode (dodgy third party update or install file) to add an extra layer. I haven't a clue how actually effective it is in that regard. I have auto runs off as well for DVD/USB et al.

Infrasonic said:

So to lock down a machine (say an employee laptop) to make it a bit more chromebook like without going as draconian as full on 'S' mode, that would work would it not?

No, it would not. That is just a standard user - same as it has been for the last 20 years with the only restriction being they can't install *some* store apps.

If they want to install Chrome or Firefox then they can - both will just stick the .exe in %localappdata% which the user has full access to.

If you want to block people you need to block access in your gateway (to gmail or TOR or whatever) or give them S mode that they can't change.

Depends what you are trying to block I guess - buggering up the local PC or wasting time on Facebook...