Solved Joind Domain and Live Tiles stop working

Trying Windows 8 at work and bought new Samsung 700t tablet. Windows 8 works fine with local user (linked to live id) and all our software including Symantec Endpoint 12.1.2. As soon as I join to domain (server 2008) and reboot the live tiles no longer function. Have total reset several times and tried refresh and restore points. My guess is that has to be default behavior of Win 8 GPO compared to 2008 domain GPO. We are very plain on our policies and so far have not found anything on local computer or GPO that can correct issues. Any ideas?

The problem is GPO related. Windows 8 is looking for tile notifications GPO settings and if the domain is Windows 2008 then there are no domain policies relating to Windows 8 Live Tiles. In the absence of the policy Windows 8 assumes "Enabled" which will "Turn Off Tile notifications".

The way I fixed was to add a Server 2012 to the domain (just member server, not dc) and add group policy managment to the server roles. This will allow you to manage GPO and include Server 2012 and Windows 8 eelements. Manage all GPO from this server. In the default domain policy (any gpo will do though) Browse to "User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Start Menu and Taskbar, Notifications". In the "Turn off file notifications" change state to "Disabled" as this will allow Live Tiles to work.

Unfortunately this did not fix issue. I think I have it after additional event viewer digging. Access Denied was the common thread. We have a GPO that provides "everyone" Full Control on HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. Not smart and was very surprised that this was here but need to find out why before changing it. At any rate in Windows 8 Explicit Permissions are required in quite a few areas. I seems that since "All Application Packages" was not Explicitly given permission that group was implicitly denied. I used regedit to give "All Application Packages" control to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and then after reboot Live Tiles worked!