General Stuff | Group Policy Administration | SDM Software | Group Policy Management & Administration Tools

Changes to GroupPolicy RSOP in Windows 8

While much is changing in Windows 8, the changes related to Group Policy are more modest. One of these modest changes is in the Resultant Set of Policy (RSoP) functionality, exposed through the Group Policy Results Wizard in GPMC. This wizard was always my first “go-to” tool when trying to troubleshoot GP Processing problems, and they’ve made it more useful in Windows 8.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the Summary tab on RSoP is completely different, as shown here:

The ...

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21
MAY

0

Categories: Cool New Products, General Stuff, GPMC, Group Policy Management, Group Policy Tools, RSOP, Windows 8

Tags: GPMC, Group Policy, RSOP, Windows 8

Using Group Policy to Manage the Internet Explorer Popup Blocker Allow List

Posted by: Darren Mar-Elia

A recent thread on the GPOGUY.COM GPTalk Mailing list prompted me to write about managing IE settings using Group Policy. In an article I wrote for Windows IT Pro Magazine in 2011, I talked about the various technologies in Group Policy that you can use to manage IE configuration. It’s definitely a mixed bag, with no less than 3 different policy areas that can be used, depending upon the setting and the desired effect. In ...

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18
MAY

0

Categories: General Stuff, Group Policy, Group Policy Management, IE Policy, Tips & Tricks

Tags: Group Policy, Group Policy Preferences, Internet Explorer

The Many Faces of Windows Configuration Management

Posted by: Darren Mar-Elia

I was reading Paul Thurrott’s most recent column on the Windows IT Pro Magazine website today. The column ostensibly talked about naming of features and products in Windows 8, but at the bottom, was this interesting tidbit,

“Blurring the lines in a way that’s almost diabolical, Microsoft recently announced that it’s introducing yet another form of PC/device management that will somewhat straddle the line between device-based management through EAS and full PC management with Active ...

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1
MAY

0

Categories: General Stuff, Group Policy, Group Policy Management, Group Policy Tools, Microsoft-Related

Tags: Configuration Management, Group Policy, Intune, Microsoft, SCCM

Have a Group Policy New Year from SDM Software!!

Posted by: Darren Mar-Elia

Well, 2011 is almost over, and it’s a been a great year for SDM Software. We achieved record revenue results this year–smashing last year’s total by over 300%– and have over 150 customers to thank for our continued success. This is in addition to the 100os of folks that have downloaded our Group Policy free tools at GPOGUY.COM and SDM Software’s Freeware Page. Our Group Policy solutions such as the Continue Reading →

30
DEC

0

Categories: General Stuff, Group Policy, Group Policy Management, sdm software

Tags: Group Policy, NewYear, sdm software

Leveraging Group Policy Preferences Item-Level Targeting from “Downlevel” Group Policy

Posted by: Darren Mar-Elia

Recently I’ve had some conversations with folks that related to their irritation that “legacy” Group Policy settings such as Admin. Templates, Security Settings, Software Installation, etc. could not benefit from the fine-grained “Item-Level-Targeting” (ILT) feature that is available with Group Policy Preferences settings. Most of us Group Policy MVPs have had this on our wish list for a while, and, understanding GP structure and internals the way I do, I realized that this would not be an easy fix for ...

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24
OCT

5

Categories: General Stuff, Group Policy, Group Policy Management, Group Policy Preferences, Tips & Tricks, Uncategorized

Tags: Group Policy, group policy management, Group Policy Tools

Good Guide to Group Policy ADMX Files Provided by Microsoft

Posted by: Darren Mar-Elia

Someone at Microsoft was kind enough to put together a nice list of all the various ADMX files that Microsoft product groups provide for extending Administrative Templates within Group Policy. Bravo for him doing this work:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4976.aspx

Enjoy!

Darren

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8
OCT

0

Categories: General Stuff, Group Policy, Group Policy Management

SDM GPMC Cmdlets Updated to Support PowerShell v.2

Posted by: Darren Mar-Elia

When we created our GPMC PowerShell cmdlets in 2008, they made it easy to get at GPMC functionality within PowerShell v1. When Microsoft shipped Windows 7/2008-R2, they also provided their own set of GPMC-related cmdlets within their GroupPolicy module. At the time I assumed that most folks would continue to use our cmdlets on PowerShell v1 and especially on non-Win7 systems, but as it turns out, we still have a lot of folks using our cmdlets instead of Microsoft ones– most ...

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26
SEP

16

Categories: General Stuff, GPMC, Group Policy Management, Group Policy Tools, PowerShell

Group Policy: Policy vs. Preferences — what does it all mean?

Posted by: Darren Mar-Elia

I recently had a good conversation with a fellow Group Policy MVP about the difference between policies and preferences (i.e. Group Policy Preferences). He asserted that with preferences, the “user can work around the settings (generally.)”. This got me thinking about what the difference really is between a policy and a preference, in the context of Group Policy. At the end of the day, what Group Policy delivers in terms of configurations settings are subject to the rules of the ...

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8
SEP

3

Categories: General Stuff, Group Policy Management, Group Policy Preferences

Got Group Policy Questions or Problems? Join me for a Q&A

Posted by: Darren Mar-Elia

Just a quick reminder to let folks know that I’ll be on the Talk Technet Episode tomrrow (Mar-30) morning at 9am (GMT-8) to take questions on Group Policy. Hope you can join me! Register here:

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032477762&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Thanks

Darren

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29
MAR

3

Categories: General Stuff, Group Policy

Tags: Group Policy, Q&A, TechNet

Group Policy Tip of the Day Tweets!

Posted by: Darren Mar-Elia

If you aren’t already following my twitter feed (@grouppolicyguy) then here’s a new reason to do so. I’m posting quick Group Policy “Tips of the Day” on Twitter, for as long as I can think of them . Check them out and let me know what you think!