Group Policy is an extremely flexible and complicated tool. One question I am asked quite a bit is, “Can you give me a list of settings I need to enable?” The short answer is No, Microsoft has already enabled the vast majority of things that should be enabled. And while Microsoft’s guidance may change over time (see Offline Files as an example of this), most settings stay the same. There is one setting, however, that is not enabled by default. If you are going to use Group Policy and want to make your troubleshooting life easier, you will want to enable it.
Tag Archives: Group Policy
Find Out What Computer a User Logged Into Automatically
Stop asking “What Computer are You On”! Instead use Active Directory and Group Policy to search for you! In this post, we are going to set Active Directory to automatically record where users login. And when a user calls, Active Directory Users and Computers will let us instantly remote into their computer and will find out what computer a user logged into. In short, you will be able to click on any computer in your domain and see the current logged in user. All within Active Directory Users and Computers!
Block the Control Panel with Group Policy and PowerShell
Being able to block the Control Panel with Group Policy is quite easy, simply enable “Prohibit access to Control Panel”. Blocking certain control panel applets, like Sound, is harder! You would think that enabling “Hide specified Control Panel items” would do the trick – that is until you read the description for that setting.
So it isn’t as simple as entering in Volume to block the Volume and Sound applet. To make sure that we block the correct applet, let’s learn the incorrect and correct way for PowerShell to list our Control Panel canonical names.
Top 5 Reasons Group Policy Software Installation Is Not Working
Group Policy Software Installation (GPSI) is an effective (and free) way to manage software deployment. After years of use, I have found these five common issues. Let’s walk through the top five issues and the solutions to a fix them! We will figure out why group policy software installation not working!
(Re)Installing the Microsoft XPS Printer
In all of my brilliant wisdom, I thought it would be a wise idea to remove the Microsoft XPS Document Writer from all of my machines.
Why did I do this? Well – three years ago, I had a site that switched to Windows 7. A common complaint was that their default printer would sometimes change to the XPS document writer and the user didn’t know where that printer was located. It was useless to explain that it was a “fictional” printer so I did the logical thing and deleted the printer using Group Policy Preferences. Boy was I dumb! Until now, I thought I was stuck with that change.