Group Policy Central

In the July 29 to August 12th Hot-fix release for Windows 6/7 there have been a number of Group Policy related hotfixes released. As far as I can tell none of these hotfixes are listed as being in Windows 7 Service Pack 1 that is currently in beta (see The complete list of Group Policy Hotfix’s in Windows 7/2008 R2 Service Pack 1) so if you are experiencing any of the above hotfixes it will be some time before you will be able to deploy them as part of a service pack.

• KB2250489 You cannot turn off the screen saver in the Windows Mobility Center when the "Prevent changing wallpaper" Group Policy setting is enabled on a computer that is running Windows Vista SP2
• KB2261826 You cannot find a network drive in the "Browse For Folder" dialog box in the GPMC MMC snap-in on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista
• KB2096902 Virtual machines in a VDI environment are not rolled back as expected if the disconnected Remote Desktop connections on the virtual machines are stopped by Group Policy
• KB2254754 You experience a GPO report-generation issue in the GPMC window when you try to generate the report in a localized version of Windows 7 or of Windows Server 2008 R2
• KB2258620 You cannot find the "Find Now," "Stop," and "Clear All" buttons in the GPMC snap-in on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2
• KB2275315 You cannot read the GPO in the SYSVOL directory in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2 if you enable the "Deny write" permission of the GPO
• KB2284538 Apply once and do not reapply Group Policy setting is never applied after the first GPO deployment fails on a client computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2

Source: Jul. 29 – Aug. 12 Hot-Fix KB articles Weekly Release – Windows 6/7 – The Hot Blog – Site Home – TechNet Blogs

The setting of the week this week disables one of the features in Windows 7 that allowed users to pin programs to the taskbar. This option will be handy if you are in an environment where you want to prevent users from customising the taskbar such as a kiosk or library style computer. The setting can be found under User Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar and only applies to Windows 7.

Note: If you do apply this setting to your existing users all the existing pinned taskbar programs will be removed on the next logon.

Below are some screenshots of the UI with the setting enabled.

“Pin to Taskbar” is removed

“Pin this program to taskbar” is removed

All existing pinned programs will be removed.

This week setting of the week is called “Change Start Menu power button” which allows you to configured the start menu shutdown button in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. You can find this setting under User Configurations>Policies>Administrative Templates>StartMenu and Taskbar.

If you have setup your computer to support Hybrid-Sleep then you should consider configuring this option to help ensure that your users select the “sleep” option.

Before

After

Note: If you select the “Sleep” or “Hibernate” options and the computers does not support that power mode then the option of shutdown will be used instead.

I was recently approached to do a book review on “Least Privilege Security for Windows 7,Vista and XP by Russell Smith” published by Packt Publishing. This book is a comprehensive guide at showing how to configure your Windows environment so that your users can operate without administrator permissions. While most administrators realise that giving administrators access to the end users is really poor practice and can lead to many security issues it is quite often a permission that some users require to do their job for whatever reason.

Its good to see that this book is quite comprehensive in the number of areas of technology as I firmly believe that you really need to take a multi-prong approach when it comes to security. Here is a list of the just some of technologies that this book talks about to achieve a Least Privilege Security:

• Program Compatibility Wizard
• Applications Compatibility Wizard
• User Account Control
• Group Policy Software Deployment
• Internet Explorer Add-on Management
• Troubleshooting Remote Users
• Configuring Windows Firewall
• Software Restrictions Policies and AppLocker
• Microsoft Deployment Toolkit
• CD Burning
• ActiveX Controls
• Changing system time and time zones
• Power Management
• Managing networks
• Standard Users Analyzer
• Applications Compatibility Toolkit
• Logon Scripts
• Remote Desktop Services
• App-V
• Med-V

In quite a lot of chapters Russell goes into detail step by step instructions explain how to use the above technologies.  But what I really like is that he also takes the time to talk about how to approach the Cultural and Political challenges in implementing this security model as this is normally the hardest part achieving a secure environment.

Configuring security is something that organisation rarely spend much time thinking about and even more rarely do anything about. Having this book in your library will at least give you the knowledge that is required to start to configure your Windows system to be more secure. I would definitely recommend this book as a reference to anyone in an organisation who is responsible for designing and/or making changes to their Windows environment.

As a special offer Packt Publishing are also letting people download preview chapter of this book by download here Chapter No. 3 – Solving Least privilege Problems with the Application Compatibility Toolkit 

Packt Publishing have also announced discount for purchases of two or more so you could use this offer to get a discount when you buy another book from their catalogue (See new-discounts-launched-purchases-multiple-books for details).

You can either purchase the paper and/or PDF (for convenient iPad reading) version of this book right now from: Least Privilege Security for Windows 7,Vista and XP by Russell Smith

The beta of Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 beta has now been released to the public for testing. For your benefit I have parsed through the complete list of hotfixes and I have listed out all the group policy specific setting. If you just want the service pack right now you can download it here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ff183870.aspx

I have highlighted the two hotfixes that stand out it my mind as the issues that have been most annoying bugs with group policy with Windows 7 RTM.

I have also posted an installation screenshot walk though on my other blog here http://www.smartergeek.info/2010/07/install-screenshots-windows-7-service-pack-1-beta/