Posted in Tutorials

AGPM Part 1: Introduction to Advanced Group Policy Management (a.k.a AGPM) v4

In this series of post I will show you how to install and user Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) v4 tool which part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation Pack  (MDOP). You qualify to use AGPM (and all the MDOP) tools if you have a subscription advantage (SA) licence agreement with Microsoft. The whole suite of MDOP tools are very handy…

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Posted in Tutorials

How to use Group Policy to enable the “Search Companion” as the default search in Windows XP

Windows Desktop Search 4.0 is a fantastic local search engine for Windows XP that allows users to quickly search all their local files and network file servers. This is also a requirement for anyone that want to use the instant search feature in Outlook 2007 as it utilises this search engine to perform an index of your inbox. However as…

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Posted in Tutorials

Updated: How to make Adobe Reader more secure using Group Policy

Update 2: Adobe has now published an official Group Policy Administrative template that has a pre-configured setting to disable Java Script. Check out my ne blog post How to configure Group Policy for Adobe Reader XI for instructions. Update: This article is a re-publish of a post I have previously posted. This time I have updated the “Configuring Automatic Update for…

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Posted in Best Practice Tutorials

How to use Group Policy to turn off Backup Notification in the Windows 7 Action Center – The Easier Way

In this article I have will show you how to turn off the Backup Notification message in eh Windows 7 Action Center. I have previously blogged about how to do this using Group Policy Preferences here (How to use Group Policy to turn off the Backup Notification in the Windows 7 Actions Center) however since writing this post Microsoft has…

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Posted in Best Practice Tutorials

How to apply a Group Policy Object to individual users or computer

Last week I showed you how to exclude an individual users from having a Group Policy Object (GPO) applied and this time I will show you how to properly apply a GPO to an individual user or computer. As I previously mentioned it is always best to use a security groups with GPO filtering even if you are only going…

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Posted in Best Practice Tutorials

How to exclude individual users or computers from a Group Policy Object

One of the common question I see on the forums from time to time is how to exclude a user and/or a computer from having a Group Policy Object (GPO) applied. This is a relatively straight forward process however I should stress this should be used sparingly and should always be done via group membership to avoid the administrative overhead…

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Posted in Best Practice Tutorials

How to use Group Policy to configure home page settings – Part 3

I know a lot of people have asked for this third an final instalment on how to use Group Policy to manage home page settings and so I have finally been able to find some time to finish this series of posts. Just to recap in Part 1 I showed you how to configure home page setting using the administrative…

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Posted in Setting of the Week Tutorials

Group Policy Setting of the Week 22b – DNS Servers

I used to think that it was not possible to set IP address information via Group Policy however I did some checking this week and was pleased to find that there was a way to configure your computers DNS Server addresses. Unfortunately this setting only applies to Windows XP, however lots of people still use XP so it is still…

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