Group Policy Central

Microsoft today  announced (after what seems to be a very long time) they have RTM’d Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 and it will be released to the public on February 22nd.

Update: Service Pack 1 is now available for download for TechNet and MSDN subscribers.

Previously I had listed the hotfixes in the beta version of the service pack, so I have again combed through the hotfix list for you convenience and I have updated the list to include the release candidate hotfixes. While this is not the final list of hotfixes Ned Pyle [MSFT] says “it’s very doubtful that the lists below will be altered much” so you can pretty much take the following list as final. In any case I will review the list when the final list of fixes is out but for now here is the list of issues.

Updated: The final list of hotfixes is now out ( Here ) and after a quick look they appear to be the same as expected.

If you have anything to do with supporting group policy in your organisation then I recommend that you at least take a look at the articles to see if you have encountered any of the problem described.

You can also see the complete list of Active Directory Hotfix’s at Ask the Directory Services Team blog posting SP1 and Directory Services: What’s New .

Even though Group Policy Preference have been out for a number of years (since Windows Server 2008) it is still a relatively unknown feature of group policy. Therefore this is the first of a few articles I am going to be writing about some of the basic features of Group Policy Preferences. So to start off with I am going to cover a few FAQ on what you need to do start using all the Group Policy Preference goodness.

Do I need to extend the schema to use Group Policy Preferences?

NO. There are no schema extensions required to support Group Policy Preferences as they work by only creating a folder called “Preference” under the User and/or Computer folder in the SYSVOL.

What are the minimum version of domain mode or domain controllers I need to support Group Policy Preferences?

Unofficially Windows 2000 Domain Mode with Windows 2000 DC’s will work fine. However officially it is what ever the minimum support OS and domain mode of Active Directory is at the time.

What software do I need to install to use Group Policy Preference?

To make it easy the table below outlines what software you need to install to enabled group policy preference on the client and to make changes to the

This is a simple tip that I want to share about the right way to Organisation Units  to ensure that you always have them protected from accidental deletion.

Ever since Windows Server 2008/Vista there has been an option in ADUC called “Protect container from accidental deletion” (see image below).

The affect of ticking this check box was that the “Everyone” group would be granted deny delete permission (see below) on the object so that it would be very hard for you to accidently delete an OU (and all of its contents) even if you are a Domain Admin. NICE!!!

This is a very handy option to have enabled on all you OU’s (groups and users) as we all know that it quite easy to accidently delete something when you are working late or just under the pump with a million things on your plate.

However…

You may also be aware that the Group Policy Management Console also has as option to create new new Organisation Unit (see below).

The problem with using GPMC is that the tool does not implement “Protect container from accidental deletion” deny security permission on the OU as the ADUC tool does (see below).

So in summary, even though it might be really convenient to create OU’s in GPMC I recommend that you do NOT do this as you might end up regretting you ever did when you accidently pressed delete one to many times…

Microsoft has now released to the public (download it here) the newest version of Internet Explorer 9 Beta to the public. If you want to know more about the new features in IE9 then i recommend that you check out http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/ to see some of the fantastic stuff that this browser enables. If the new functionality alone is not enough to get you to use it is just remember that it is now a Fully Hardware accelerated which makes it much faster than any other browser on the market!!!

With any new version IE there comes new features and with new features comes new group policy settings so below I go through the new policy settings and how you can get started right now with managing IE9 using Group Policy.

To get started you will need to download and install IE9 on whatever computer you are using Group Policy Management Console (a.k.a. GPMC) to edit your Group Policy settings as with anything to do with Group Policy it is normally best to make changes from a systems that has the newest software on it in your organisation.

WARNING: This software is still Beta so you are strongly recommended to isolate any testing you do with IE9 and Group Policy from your production environment.

Continue reading ‘Internet Explorer 9 (Beta) Group Policy Settings’ »

Here is another video from Lilia Gutnik (Program Manager with the Group Policy Team) on TechNet Edge about the search features in the Group Policy Management Console. If you have every lost a Group Policy Object or just made an edit and was not sure which GPO you were in then this video will show you how to use the advanced search features in GPMC. Very AWESOME!

I recommend you watch to the end to the very end…