My personal experience with HP ThinShell for Kiosk Mode

Because my mainly focus is on endpoints, I'm doing a lot with fat, thin and virtual clients and mobile devices. This time I want to mention HP thin clients, which have some nice software onboard by default. There is Cloud Connection Manager, ThinShell and Universal Write Filter (UWF) for example. ThinShell is a client automation tool that enables Kiosk Mode (shell replacement) functionality for standard users (non-administrators).

Features of HP ThinShell include the following:
-You can choose to customize and use the built-in ThinShell interface or specify an entirely different shell program.
-Using your administrator credentials, you can customize the ThinShell interface and settings from within a standard user account.
-ThinShell can be used in conjunction with Cloud Connection Manager to simplify Kiosk Mode deployments for multiple standard users.

Download can be done here (64-bit or 32-bit)
Installation is very easy, and on HP thin clients it's already there.

User interface, choose buttons

Applications for shell replacement

Control Panel items available

Default website to show

Default behavior when process stops

After reboot you will see changes immediately! It's like ThinKiosk but then integrated by default. Very nice to see some progress here.

When using ThinShell you can setup thin clients very easy. Just use HP Device Manager (or ConfigMgr) for capturing, deploying and managing thin clients afterwards.

WES8 deployment with ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 or R2

Last month I did a few thin client deployments with ConfigMgr 2012 SP1. When starting you have the choice to download a clean WES8 image at the HP website. That way a FLASH.IBR (4GB) is downloaded, which can be renamed to FLASH.WIM and imported in ConfigMgr. Another way to create an image is using ConfigMgr Capture media. This can be started in Windows Embedded (WES) to sysprep and upload the image. Third option is to download a clean image from the Microsoft website, using Image Builder Wizard (IBW), with the risk that HP drivers are missing after deployment. I prefer using the download option, with the image customized for HP thin clients. Let's have a look at deployment progress. 
 
Deployment is done with the option "Download content locally when needed by running task sequence" by default. That way 4GB is downloaded on Flash RAM on the thin client and extracted after that. This seems not the fastest option, because Flash RAM isn't designed to do heavy Read/Write actions at same time. In my case downloading the image took 30 minutes and extracting the image took another 60 minutes. Why Flash RAM is that slow is a question for me also. Way to slow to do multiple deployments a day I think. When using an USB-stick for doing the deployment (without ConfigMgr usage) installation is done in 120 minutes also, so not that good also.
 

Let's have a look at the different Write Filters also. ConfigMgr supports managing the following types of write filters:
-File-Based Write Filter (FBWF) on WES 7E, 7P and 2009 devices (ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 or R2 only)
-Enhanced Write Filter (EWF) RAM on WES 7E, 7P and 2009 devices (ConfigMgr 2012 SP1 or R2 only)
-Unified Write Filter (UWF) on WES8 devices (ConfigMgr 2012 R2 only)
Note: ConfigMgr does not support write filter operations when the Windows Embedded device is in EWF RAM Reg mode.
 
To create Write Filter settings use Embedded Lockdown Manager (ELM). ELM is a snap-in to the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). You can use ELM directly on a Standard 8 device, or you can use ELM on a development computer and then remotely connect to a Standard 8 device. ELM automatically detects which lockdown features are installed on the device, and displays configuration options for only those features. ELM uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to detect and change configuration settings.

In a typical installation, ELM can be found at the following location:
%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\EmbeddedLockdown.msc
Just use "Connect to Device" from a remote system and "Export to PowerShell" to save WES settings in a ps1 file. This package must be used within ConfigMgr during deployment. (for example: ELM Write Filter settings package with TC-settings.ps1 file)
 
In the task sequence (used for TC deployment) there must be a few steps added:
-Browse to the newly created deployment task sequence. Right-click it and select Edit to open the Task Sequence Editor. Select Partition Disk 0. Double-click on (Primary) Volume to edit its properties. The Partition Properties window opens. Under Use a percentage of remaining free space, enter 95. (The deployment will fail if this value is left at 100, because Windows will not be able to create the write filter partition.) 
Two more settings need to be changed for thin clients that do not have enough disk space to store both the downloaded WIM and the extracted contents locally.
-Select Apply Operating System in the Task Sequence Editor and open the Options tab. Check "Access content directly from the distribution point".
-Right-click the reference image package in Operating System Images and open the Properties dialog. Configure the Package share settings on the Data Access tab. Check "Copy the content in this package to a package share on distribution points".
When deploy the task sequence (used for TC deployment) choose the following option:
-On the Distribution Points screen, set the deployment option to "Download content locally when needed by running task sequence" and check the option "When no local distribution point is available, use a remote distribution point".

The write filter status is disabled by default after the task sequence finishes successfully. Use the following settings in the deployment task sequence to configure and enable the write filter (Source: Nothing but ConfigMgr):
-Task Sequence Variable: SMSTSPostAction > Value: cmd /c shutdown /r /t 60 /f
-Command line: bcdedit /set {current} bootstatuspolicy ignoreallfailures
-Run PowerShell Script: Package: ELM Write Filter settings & Script name: TC-settings.ps1 & PowerShell execution policy: Bypass

Download links:
Download Windows Embedded 8 Standard
Drivers, Software & Firmware for HP t610 Flexible Thin Client
Managing HP Thin Clients with SCCM 2012 SP1 (PDF)
Deploying the ConfigMgr Client to WES Devices
ELM Technical Reference (WES8)