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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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 ...Continue Reading →
We’re here at MMS 2012 in Las Vegas this week (see a picture of our booth attached to this post!) talking to customers about their Group Policy needs. A couple of interesting themes emerged. One is kind of humorous. More often than not, when someone walked by and we asked whether they managed Group Policy, they would usually groan and say something like, “Unfortunately, yes”. That’s interesting because it seems like more folks find GP a drudgery rather than the ...
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Just a quick note that I finally got around to updating our freeware Group Policy Health Cmdlet to add module support for PowerShell v2. Hopefully this makes the cmdlet more discoverable for those of you using it in PowerShell v2 (probably everybody!). The module name is SDM-GPOHealth, so after running the install, just open PowerShell v2 and type:
import-module SDM-GPOHealth and you’ll be good to go!
And for more info on using the Health cmdlet, check out my Continue Reading →
One of the cool things I like about our Group Policy Automation Engine product is the scenarios that it’s open up by providing what is essentially an automation portal into GPOs. One of those key scenarios is the ability to automate additions and changes to Group Policy Preferences Drive Mappings, which is used by organizations large and small to map user drives at logon, and is largely replacing traditional ...
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One of the challenges of the GPMC’s reporting is that it is not easy to find GPOs that have had Deny ACEs (Access Control Entries) set on their delegation. Deny ACEs are typically used to deny a particular user, computer or group from applying a GPO. I always recommend that they’re used on an exception basis, for the very reason that they are hard to spot after the fact and can cause increased complexity in your Group Policy deployments. Deny ACEs don’t ...
Continue Reading →![GPO Compare 2.5 (New) Demo | Group Policy Management [Video]](http://www.sdmsoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/gpocomparescreen1-538x218.png)
Today we released an updated version of our widely used GPO Compare product. The 2.5 release brings some cool new features and improvements over 2.0, including:
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 →
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 ...
Continue Reading →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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