Windows 10 on the Dell Venue 8 Pro

Based on the success of my Surface Pro 3 upgrade to Windows 10 (via the Media Creation tool), I am proceeding to standardize the device fleet.

The next toy to get the upgrade is my Dell Venue 8 Pro, my handy 8" tablet that, initially at least, frustrated the hell out of me due to early driver issues. While the upgrade this time was similarly  smooth, there were serious input lag delays and slow performance on the older firmware (A5) and the older chipset drivers. I was initially unable to do things like adjust battery settings, screen dimming settings, etc.

In order to get back to the great battery life and performance on my 8.1 stack, I had to grab the new files from the web.

So here is the recipe for happiness on the Venue Pro 8:

5830_Chipset_Driver_67YC3_WN32_603.9600.2067.27988_A00.EXE
5830A11.EXE

These are the chipset drivers for the Intel Atom Z3700 and the BIOS firmware to get to the Dell preferred A11 version for Windows 10.

Installation of the Chipset drivers required Run As Administrator to operate correctly, but once applied a simple reboot and performance was impressively improved. Battery life instantly was back to the 8 to 10 hours that I enjoyed with minimal tweaking on Windows 8.1. I will post an update of power utilization after a few test runs.

There is a new battery report utility on system settings, similar to the ones seen on phones, that report a breakdown of what applications and devices consumed the battery. Its a nice touch. I keep finding nuggets like this in 10 that I am really appreciating. So far, my experience has been outstanding (aside from the Edge browser - probably my next write up).

Thanks for reading! Onwards and upwards!

Cisco Anyconnect Support for Windows 10

Well, its that time again. A new Microsoft operating system was released today - one that is HIGHLY anticipated and promises to address many of the frustrations experienced by some users of Windows 8 or 8.1. Personally, I have enjoyed 8, and appreciated the slight modifications delivered in 8.1, but I have only used them on touch enabled devices (my Surface Pro, Pro 3, and Dell Venue).  I think that was a large factor in my happiness.

My most popular blog posts (still generating hits) were the ones that assisted the Corporate users of Surface Pro hardware with getting Cisco AnyConnect working. I will try to assist those people again, by jumping on the grenade early and documenting in an available location again. So without further ado, here is Cisco's official support statement regarding Windows 10 support:


AnyConnect Compatibility with Microsoft Windows 10.X
AnyConnect 3.1MR10 (3.1.10010) and later are compatible with Windows 10 official release.

Technical Assistance Center (TAC) support will be available beginning on 7/29/2015. For best results, we recommend a clean install of AnyConnect on Windows 10 system and not an upgrade from Windows 7/8/8.1. If you are planning to perform an upgrade from Windows 7/8/8/1 with AnyConnect pre-installed, make sure that you first upgrade AnyConnect prior to upgrading the Operating System. The Network Access Manager module must be uninstalled prior to upgrading to Windows 10. After the first upgrade is complete, it can be re-installed on the system. You may also choose to fully uninstall AnyConnect and re-install one of the supported versions after upgrading to Windows 10.

For my own personal journey, I will be backing up my configuration files FIRST. These are located in the following directory:

C:\ProgramData\Cisco\Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client\Network Access Manager\system

I have a zipped archive of the configuration.xml file, and will be copying back into that directory once I have:

• Uninstalled my Anyconnect client
• Upgraded successfully to Windows 10
• Performed a "clean" installation of Anyconnect using anyconnect-win-3.1.10010-pre-deploy-k9.iso

Any issues encountered I will address and document with due diligence, in the hopes that it will make peoples lives easier. If you have any tips or feedback, please feel free to share it!

Please do not request copies of the ISO - this is licensed Cisco software and as such is subject to a valid licensing agreement being in place for entitlement. I was able to quickly download the ISO by logging into Cisco TAC, and navigating to:

Downloads > Home Products > Security > VPN and Endpoint Security Clients> Cisco VPN Clients> AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client >AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client v3.x> AnyConnect VPN Client Software-3.1.10010

Looking forward to the feedback - happy computing!