Posted in News Tutorials

Internet Explorer 9 (Beta) Group Policy Settings

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…

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Posted in Best Practice Tutorials

How to configure Roaming Profiles and Folder Redirection

Read Me First: If you are using Folder Redirection with Windows 7 in your organisation then I would definitely recommend that you check my other blog post about a pretty nasty Folder redirection bug and how to fix it at  Disappearing Folder Redirection Issues with Windows 7 Update: I have new blog post that describes the new “Primary Computer” feature in…

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Posted in Best Practice Tutorials

How to use Group Policy to control Services

Services are programs that are configured to run in the background of a Windows computer weather or not there is a users that is logged on. They are essential part of windows and are essential to the operation of any windows computers. Without services computer could not perform automatic updates, run scheduled tasks or even connect to a file share….

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Posted in Security Tutorials

Update: How to workaround KB2286198/MS10-046 .lnk Icon security issues with Group Policy

Update: Microsoft have now released the patch to the .lnk vulnerability MS10-046: Vulnerability in Windows Shell could allow remote code execution . If you have previously deployed the workaround using this article then it is now time to reverse the change you made by simple jumping to Removing the KB2286198 Workaround via Group Policy section and following the instructions. Needless…

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Posted in Best Practice Tutorials

Group Policy Design Guidelines – Part 2

In my previous article In this article Best Practice:Active Directory Structure Guidelines – Part 1 I spoke about some of the guidelines I personally use when developing an Active Directory OU structure. In this next part I will discuss some guidelines I use when designing a Group Policy Object infrastructure. Ideally you should make the the Active Directory OU and…

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Posted in Best Practice Tutorials

Active Directory Structure Guidelines – Part 1

I have been doing Active Directory and Group Policy work for a while now and I have developed my own set of rules that I try to use where ever possible. So below I have written down all my rules in no particular order for you to go over and use for yourself. You may only chose to use only…

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Posted in Best Practice Tutorials

How to manage Windows Firewall settings using Group Policy

In this article I am going to talk about how you can use Group Policy to control the firewall that comes out of the box with Windows but first I want to give you a bit of history of the evolution of host based firewall in Windows. Firewalls have long been around for year protecting internal corporate networks from outside…

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Posted in Tutorials

How to use Group Policy to allow the users to chose any screensaver except (None)

During Kevin Sullivan Group Policy session at TechEd 2010 in the USA this year he mentioned an example of a being able to configure group policy to allow users to select whatever screensaver they want except the one called “(None)” (see image below). While this method does not prevent the users from select the (None) from the screensaver options list…

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