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docs(validation): record that the agent is never sent to a Windows 11 Home device - #47

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@fadwen fadwen commented Oct 16, 2026

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Summary

The "Windows on ARM" section of Validation/Findings.md was a host survey with the agent's own behaviour marked pending. The one ARM64 device available runs Windows 11 Home, so on 16 October it was Entra registered and MDM enrolled in the dev tenant, placed in a device group of its own, and 27 existing experiments were assigned to that group, to find out whether the Intune Management Extension arrives on Home at all and, if it did, what it does on ARM64.

It does not arrive. In 75 minutes and 11 syncs the service addressed DMClient, NodeCache, Policy/ConfigOperations/ADMXInstall and LAPS, and never EnterpriseDesktopAppManagement, the CSP that delivers the agent's MSI. No agent folder, service, log or registry key; no run state for any of the 27 policies; no row for the device in the Win32 apps' install report. That matches the documentation's "excluding Windows Home", and the ARM64 agent behaviour stays pending until a Pro or Enterprise ARM64 device is enrolled.

A second observation came for free: the tenant's LAPS policy, assigned to All devices, reached the device on its first four syncs and failed on every node with 0x86000011, the CSP's "not supported on this edition" result, as the LAPS CSP's edition list says.

Changes

  • Validation/Findings.md: the ARM section's pending note says why it is still pending; a new "Windows 11 Home: the agent is never sent" subsection records the enrollment, the two observations with their evidence, and that nothing changes for the tool.
  • CHANGELOG.md: Changed entry under Unreleased.

Verification

  • Evidence read from the device's DeviceManagement-Enterprise-Diagnostics-Provider/Admin log (44 events, 03:51 to 04:54 UTC), the agent's install paths and registry keys, Intune's managedDevices record (skuFamily = Home), the policies' deviceRunStates, and a DeviceInstallStatusByApp export job. Nothing on the device was changed beyond the enrollment; the tenant changes (a group, a user, a LAPS exclusion, the 27 extra assignments) are being removed.
  • Markdown only; no code or help changed.

… Home device

The ARM64 device available runs Windows 11 Home. Enrolled and assigned
27 experiments, it synced 11 times in 75 minutes and the service never
addressed EnterpriseDesktopAppManagement, the CSP that delivers the
Intune Management Extension; no agent, no run states, no install report
row. The ARM64 agent behaviour stays a host survey until a Pro or
Enterprise ARM64 device is enrolled. The LAPS policy failed on every node
with 0x86000011 on Home, as the CSP's edition list says.

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Notes on the lines whose reason the diff does not show.

Comment thread Validation/Findings.md
"64-bit" host is native ARM64, so `PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE -eq 'AMD64'` is false there; there is
no x64 PowerShell to run at all.

### Windows 11 Home: the agent is never sent

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Filed under the ARM section rather than as a round of its own because the device was enrolled for the ARM question; the Home result is what stopped that question being answered, and a reader looking for ARM evidence should find out here why there is none yet. The 75-minute window is longer than every assignment-propagation figure the README records (2 to 8 minutes, Win32 by push in seconds), which is what makes eleven syncs with no EnterpriseDesktopAppManagement command a result rather than a wait.

Comment thread Validation/Findings.md
| The Intune Management Extension applies to supported Windows versions "excluding Windows Home and Windows devices running in S mode"; Win32 apps need Enterprise, Pro or Education; remediations need a joined device on one of those editions | **The agent is never delivered.** The device synced 11 times in 75 minutes (03:51 to 04:54 UTC, 44 MDM events) and the service addressed only `DMClient`, `NodeCache`, `Policy/ConfigOperations/ADMXInstall` and, until the group exclusion took effect, `LAPS`. Not one `EnterpriseDesktopAppManagement` command, which is how the agent's MSI arrives; no agent folder, service, log or `IntuneManagementExtension` registry key. The 27 policies have no run state for the device and the Win32 apps' device install report has no row for it, applicable or not. Intune lists the device as `skuFamily = Home`, Entra registered, compliant, and the policy evaluation stops there | ✅ |
| LAPS CSP: Pro, Enterprise, Education and IoT Enterprise only | Every LAPS node the All-devices policy carried (`BackupDirectory`, `PasswordAgeDays`, `PasswordComplexity`, `PasswordLength`, `PostAuthenticationActions`, `PostAuthenticationResetDelay`) failed with `0x86000011` on each of the four syncs before the exclusion reached the device; nothing was applied | ✅ |

**For the tool:** nothing changes. A Home device never gets the agent, so no script, remediation

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Stated explicitly because it is the only Findings entry whose observed behaviour has no rule behind it: the module analyzes scripts for where the agent runs them, and a device the agent never reaches is outside that. Get-IslHostArchitecture is named so the reader knows the ARM64 code paths still rest on the host survey above, not on an agent run.

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fadwen merged commit dcee2b2 into main Oct 16, 2026
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fadwen deleted the docs/findings-home-arm branch October 16, 2026 19:28
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