Winselect alternative

[Berrnard]

My company is moving to win11 on new builds, winselect currently does not work on 11.
weve used winselect for years and love it because it is a local program, you can press a key combo and get into the admin console. we use it to lock down our public pcs so that they can only open our apps that are pointed to our server on the same network. none of this cloud based stuff is fitting the bill

 

[Darren]

Full disclosure I have no familiarity with this software but do work in enterprise IT. I would NOT want to be using a software like this that seems to get updated once every year or two, with the last update being nearly 3 years ago in 2019.

I'd reach out to the company and see if they have any intent to support W11. Not sure what that software accomplishes you couldn't do with GPOs. How many endpoints do you have and what kind of server are you referring to? File shares? Application server? Is this a full AD domain?

 

[beers]

none of this cloud based stuff is fitting the bill

What about enforcing policy with GPO? It seems like that entire product is an 'easy mode' for the same functionality, especially when the tagline is literally 'Allows you to easily control your end-users' Windows Experience without having to deal with GPOs.'.

I'm curious why the push to W11 when all of your apps don't support it. Those situations typically end up as a dumpster fire when people try to #yoloswag solutions without considering any technical elements or dependencies.

W10 goes EOS in 2025, so at least you have some time to evaluate.

Also curious why you all aren't using a standardized image, having a bunch of different dependencies becomes a nightmare at scale.

 

[Berrnard]

Full disclosure I have no familiarity with this software but do work in enterprise IT. I would NOT want to be using a software like this that seems to get updated once every year or two, with the last update being nearly 3 years ago in 2019.

I'd reach out to the company and see if they have any intent to support W11. Not sure what that software accomplishes you couldn't do with GPOs. How many endpoints do you have and what kind of server are you referring to? File shares? Application server? Is this a full AD domain?

can you target certain computers with gpo? at a customer site we have open pcs and locked down ones

about 200+ endpoints that need to locked down
the server is a DC, running sql queries, app server

 

[Berrnard]

What about enforcing policy with GPO? It seems like that entire product is an 'easy mode' for the same functionality, especially when the tagline is literally 'Allows you to easily control your end-users' Windows Experience without having to deal with GPOs.'.

I'm curious why the push to W11 when all of your apps don't support it. Those situations typically end up as a dumpster fire when people try to #yoloswag solutions without considering any technical elements or dependencies.

W10 goes EOS in 2025, so at least you have some time to evaluate.

Also curious why you all aren't using a standardized image, having a bunch of different dependencies becomes a nightmare at scale.

OUR proprietary apps do work on 11 and all our pcs come with 11. turning them back to 10 is work we dont have time for
its a small company, noone here knows about an image or how to make one

 

[Darren]

You have 200 endpoints, a domain with a DC, and nobody knows how to do an image (or use GPOs)? The heck? Not trying to bash you outright but that's pretty startling, particularly not even using images. That's a pretty basic IT 101 level concept and would allow you finer control over things that might even make this software unnecessary.

 

[Berrnard]

You have 200 endpoints, a domain with a DC, and nobody knows how to do an image (or use GPOs)? The heck? Not trying to bash you outright but that's pretty startling, particularly not even using images. That's a pretty basic IT 101 level concept and would allow you finer control over things that might even make this software unnecessary.

we would need to turn gpo settings off at a moments notice to perform maintenance remotely. Yes a couple of people do know gpo and have implemented it, but i don't know their knowledge
and then that 200 endpoints out of 800 that need to be locked down

 

[beers]

OUR proprietary apps do work on 11 and all our pcs come with 11. turning them back to 10 is work we dont have time for
its a small company, noone here knows about an image or how to make one

Nice that 'yours' do, but not all of the apps you use, such as Winselect do, which should have been a part of testing a W11 environment before pushing it out to users.

It seems like this company has had a need to hire for that role for a while, but hasn't, leaving you with the current situation.

There's a few other various MDM solutions like 'meraki system manager' for example, not sure if they have the same feature parity, but you'll have to push an agent package out to everyone for nearly every solution that isn't GPO. Since your user base is fragmented now then not everyone will have the same experience and it's significantly more difficult to manage. There's also costs involved depending on the solution.

The 'easiest' path forward given the staffing and technical limitations is to halt W11 deployments until a comparable solution is ready for implementation, that functions in that environment.