Posted in News Tip

Edge Chromium Group Policy Settings

Microsoft Edge Chromium Group Policy setting have been released for testing, take a look at how to download the new settings and what settings are still missing.

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Posted in News Security Tutorials

How to disable SMB 1 on Windows 7 via Group Policy to Prevent WannaCry

Update 1: These instructions will mitigate WannaCry / Wcry / WannaCrypt virus propagation on Windows 7 and later (Windows 10 is not affected). For more technical details about the virus see Troy Hunts blog at https://www.troyhunt.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-wannacrypt-ransomware/ In case you have not got the message yet SMB 1 protocol Bad and that according to Microsoft you should “Stop using SMB1”. Not…

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Posted in Tutorials

How to setup Work Folder using Group Policy

Work Folders is a great new server role feature with Windows Server 2012 R2 that allows your end user to sync their files over multiple device at work and at home. Think of it as SkyDrive hosted on Windows Server in your own server room rather than by a third party. While there are a lot more technically impressive features…

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Posted in News Tip

Missing Internet Explorer Maintenance option from GPMC with Windows 7 / 2008 R2

One of the changes with Windows 8 and Group Policy was that the Internet Explorer Maintenance section of GPMC was removed from under Windows Settings (see Interesting Change to Group Policy in Server 2012/Windows 8). However people have been noticing that the same Internet Explorer Maintenance option is removed from GPMC when they now install IE 10 on Windows 7…

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Posted in Best Practice hotfix Tip

Disappearing Folder Redirection Issues with Windows 7

Thanks to a tip off from fellow MVP Darren Mar-Elia about fairly common issues with Folder Redirection in Windows 7. In short there is a pretty significant issue in Folder Redirection if configured incorrectly that could result in a loss of data for users. There is a mitigation of this issues however this is broken in Windows 7 Service Pack…

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Posted in Tip

How to implement Internet Explorer 10 Group Policy with Windows 7

Internet Explorer 10 has been out for a while now if you are using Windows 8 however Microsoft has only just released IE 10 for Windows 7. So If you are not contemplating upgrading to Windows 8 but do want the goodness of the improved HTML 5 support of IE 10 then it might be a good time to check…

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Posted in Tutorials

How to use Group Policy to deny executing, writing and/or reading on removable disks

Removable memory sticks are the back door for data in any organisation. BitLocker to Go can do some way to controlling this vector however you might want to simple close off all access to removable drives for all your users. So if you are running Windows 7 you will be glad to know there are a heap of Windows 7…

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Posted in Tip

How to fix AD PowerShell error “Unable to find a default server with Active Directory Web Services running.”

Today I experienced Serendipity with the error “Unable to find a default server with Active Directory Web Services running.” in PowerShell with Windows 7. This message was occurring when trying to create some new OU’s using the New-ADOrganizationalUnit command. Initially I thought it was due to not having the required Active Directory Powershell commands installed but then I realised that…

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