Posted in Security Tutorials

How to disable SSL v2 and SSL v3 on Windows Server via Group Policy

In this article I will show you how to disable the SSL v2 and SSL v3 protocols on the Windows Server so that it no longer offers the depreciated (a.k.a. Broken) SSL v2 and v3 security protocols. It also does not hurt if you apply this policy settings to your Windows client computers in case any of them have IIS with digital certificate enabled….

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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 News

Installing IE9 on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 doesn’t require a reboot

Update: Now that I have installed the final version of IE9 on 6 computers 2 of them needed to rebook so it would seem that it may or may not require a reboot. This seems to be dependent on what application you are running at the time. Therefore it would still be prudent to plan for a reboot but not…

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Posted in hotfix

Updated: Group Policy Hotfix’s in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 1

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…

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Posted in News

The complete list of Group Policy Hotfix’s in Windows 7/2008 R2 Service Pack 1

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…

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Posted in Setting of the Week

Group Policy Setting of the Week 32 – Prevent changing mouse pointers

The group policy setting for the week this week is a new policy setting for Windows 7/2008 R2. This setting is called “Prevent changing mouse pointers” and can be found under User Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Personalization. This setting is handy if you want to tightly control the user environment such as public access…

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Posted in News

More Group Policy hot fixes

Just found out about a few more hot fixes that Microsoft recently released for Group Policy. KB979621 A removable storage device is disabled when you enable a Group Policy to deny write access or to deny read access to the device on a computer that is running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 Fixes an issues with removable storage devices…

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Posted in News

New Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2 Group Policy hotfix round up

Last week Microsoft released a few new Group Policy hot fixes for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, below is a link to each KB article and my own short description hotfix. KB981054 The Group Policy preference settings for the “Terminal Session” item-level targeting item are not applied in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2.” This is…

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