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Controlling shares on Windows systems

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Well, I’ve been crazy busy working on some new product releases but I wanted to take a moment to blog about some useful features in GP Preferences that often slip through the cracks. I saw a blog post today about how you could use a custom ADM file to remove administrative shares on Windows systems. This works pretty well, but I always prefer it when Group Policy makes it really easy for me to manage configuration, and ...
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22
JUN
1

Categories: Group Policy Preferences, Security-related

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MS Releases Hotfix for Software Restriction Policy Reporting Bug

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Thanks to reader Ryan Steele for bringing my attention to the fact that MS has released a hotfix to resolve the GPMC reporting bug that was introduced when Win7 and Server 2008, R2 shipped. I had documented this bug in an earlier blog post. Ryan let me know that MS finally issued a hotfix for this, described at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/981750.

Darren

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16
APR
0

Categories: Bugs

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Why Win32_Product is Bad News!

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This entry isn’t strictly related to Group Policy, but something I came across in that context a few days ago. There is a WMI class called Win32_Product. Querying this class lets you enumerate all installed MSI applications on a given system. This might sound useful for, say, a Group Policy WMI filter. You might be tempted to use it to create a conditional Group Policy scenario whereby you only process a policy if a particular application is installed. Here’s why ...
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11
APR
17

Categories: WMI

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More on Group Policy Backups and Version Compatibility

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As a follow-on to my last blog post, here’s another interesting Group Policy Backup scenario to keep in mind. A user emailed that they were having problems importing a GPO backup that was created on a test Server 2008-R2 AD domain, into a Server 2003 AD domain. Theoretically this should work ok, but the user was getting non-descript errors about directory attributes not being found when they tried the import. I  scratched my head for a bit on this one and ...
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24
FEB
1

Categories: GPMC

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GPMC Backups from Downlevel Systems

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I had a question recently that I thought was worth blogging. The question was, “if I create a GPO using Windows 7, Server 2008 or similar newer platform”, then backup that GPO using XP or Server 2003, will it back up everything?”.  The answer, not surprisingly, is “it depends”. GPMC Backup only backs up the “policy areas” that it knows about. For example, if I set some policy settings within Administrative Templates policy on Server 2008 and then backup that ...
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5
FEB
0

Categories: General Stuff

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The Minasi Conference

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Just a quick note to remind folks that for the 5th year in a row my good friend Mark Minasi is hosting the Minasi Conference in Virginia this Spring. For those of you who are used to going to one of those big conferences, this is a much more “intimate” and, in some ways, more valuable type of technical conference. Mark being who he is, you will hear some of the Windows world’s smartest techies at this ...
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31
JAN
0

Categories: General Stuff

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Re-Upped for Another Year of MVP!

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Despite once again having to fetch it from my spam folder, I did indeed get the coveted email from Microsoft yesterday indicating that I’d been made a Group Policy MVP for the 5th year in a row. Cool!

I am honored and happy to be an MVP for another year. I look forward to another year of community contributions!

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2
JAN
2

Categories: General Stuff

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RSoP & GP Preferences

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I was playing around with some scenarios related to "item-level targeting" (ILT) in Group Policy Preferences and was reminded of a significant limitation in this newer as it relates to Resultant Set of Policy reporting. What I was doing was creating a GPO that contains some GP Preferences registry settings, and then using item-level targeting to control which machine groups got those registry settings. However, when I went into GPMC and ran a GP Results (RSoP) report against one of ...

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29
NOV
0

Categories: Group Policy Preferences

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Group Policy Automation Engine wins Editor’s Choice Gold!

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Well, I was very surprised and happy to receive an IM from a colleague this morning, directing me to http://windowsitpro.com/Windows/Articles/ArticleID/102984/pg/2/2.html, where I read that our SDM Software Group Policy Automation Engine won GOLD as Best Active Directory and Group Policy Product. This is really cool and a great acknowledgement of the work we’ve been doing. Its always nice to be recognized and especially to win in the Editor’s Choice category!

 Cool!

 

 

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Group Policy, SDM ...

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20
NOV
0

Categories: sdm software

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Win7 issue reporting on Software Restriction Policies

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I found this issue recently–at first I thought it was just my environment, but have confirmed it on a couple of different environments. When you are on a Win 7 box (and probably R2 as well), in GPMC and viewing the setttings of a GPO that had previously been created and contains software restriction policies, you will get an error when GPMC tries to display those SRP settings. Specifically, the error looks like this:

 

Software ...

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2
NOV
4

Categories: Bugs

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