The latest Group Policy settings reference spreadsheet that covers the available administrative template settings and security settings for Windows Server “8” Beta, Windows 8 Consumer Preview and all earlier versions of Windows is now available in the...

You might have seen GP MVP Jeremy Moskowitz’s post on how to recycle GPO comments . While Jeremy points out you can do this without a script…. You can also do it with a script! Our tech writer, Judith, walks us through the process:   After I import...

This post was written by Judith, a technical writer for Group Policy. This is the second post in a series on ways to use Powershell with Group Policy. See the first post on getting started with RSAT and Group Policy Let’s say I have a forest and I’d like...

This post was written by Judith, a technical writer for Group Policy. This will be the first post in a series on ways to use Powershell with Group Policy I wanted to play around with the Group Policy cmdlets. These are installed on Windows Server 2008...

Jeff Hicks, one of Microsoft’s Powershell MVPs, has written a great script for managing GPO backups : The GroupPolicy module from Microsoft offers a great deal of functionality from a command line. In terms of regular maintenance or administration it...

Ashley McGlone has a great script up for merging GPOs together through powershell. I wish I had this script five years ago. At the time I was searching for a way to combine or merge GPOs, but there simply wasn’t a way to do it. And today there still isn...

Michael has covered “least privilege” for AGPM before (the Active Directory team followed up with a bit more detail). However, those scenarios are for single-domains. What if you have a forest where you want to manage all the child domains using AGPM...

Tales from the Community – Deleting registry values Okay, I've seen this question in the Technet Forums that basically goes like this: " Hey I have this reg script that deletes a value off the registry for me. The .reg file does [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT...

Here’s a quick follow-up to our last post on the existence of GPO search . One of our MVPs, Alan, has a great post up about a Group Policy Search webapp (Previously mentioned on this blog ). It includes instructions on how to install a Windows Search...

We've got two new videos for you! The TechNet guys dropped by to ask Lilia some questions (always a good idea, in my opinion), and in return she dropped some knowledge. http://edge.technet.com/Media/Group-Policy-Search-with-Lilia/ - Did you know...

I do not know about you but I LOVE PowerShell, especially the Group Policy cmdlets. Unfortunately, I didn’t have too many opportunities to really use them - but luckily got a chance in preparation for a presentation where I would demo a script that...

Hey, Scripting Guy! has a great series of posts around Group Policy & scripting: Using group policy cmdlets for backup and restore Test AD replication with group policy cmdlets How to compare 2 GPOs offline ( Part II )

Kapil posted a great article about a new tool created by Stephanus Schulte and Jean-Pierre Regente. It's an Azure-hosted tool that keyword searches Group Policy settings. Read about it here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2010/06/24/announcing...

I was reading GP MVP Darren Mar-Elia’s forum about WMI Filters and discovered a sweet PowerShell trick from another awesome friend of the GP team, Thorbjörn Sjövold (CTO of Specops Software ) You can use the PowerShell cmdlet “measure...

Darren Mar-Elia, aka GPOGuy, wrote a cool post about using Group Policy Preferences to remove unwanted network shares from your environment. Group Policy Preferences can do everything! If you've got Windows Server 2008 or above, you've already got GP...

Thanks for tuning in this lovely Friday! Time for a glimpse into the advanced side of Group Policy, with Advanced Group Policy Management . This awesome product comes as part of MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack), which you can get easily if you...

Hey everyone at MMS (or TechReady, or anywhere for that matter) If you've followed my advice and you're checking the blog, here's a neat little present for you! Did someone make 1000 GPO's with the word 'test' in them just to test out some sweet...

It’s Friday and it’s sunny in my neighborhood, which means it is blog posting time! Let’s talk about WMI filters today, shall we? If I have WMI Filters and Group Policy Preferences targeting, do they cancel out? Does one have precedence? Will the world...

We're pleased to inform that four new Visual C# samples have been published to the MSDN Library that demonstrate using the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) Class Library to perform some basic GP tasks. Note that all samples include step-by-step...

Troubleshooting Group Policy can be a pain. I agree. When I try out new awesome Group Policy Preferences, or I experiment with the GP cmdlets, I am sometimes stumped. Here's what we do when we are troubleshooting our own test environments on the Group...

Lots of people ask the Group Policy Team: What are the best settings to configure? What is the most secure GPO we can deploy? I've been talking about this a lot with the Group Policy customer support folks, and the topic resulted in the following editorial...

From the Newsgroups: "Hi! In order to use all of windows 7 AD Policies you need to be running Windows Server 2008 R2?Can i get a list of Group Policies that i cannot be leveraging when a windows 7 client is in a windows 2003 domain? ...

From the Group Policy TechNet Forum, featuring Florian, ever-helpful Group Policy MVP: Hi What is the difference between “no-override” and “block policy inheritance” in group policy option? Regards M. Hey M.! It looks like you’re trying...

Happy Holidays! http://www.youtube.com/user/jeremymoskowitz#p/u/0/UsYkbLzVsM8 This is the Group Policy present you've been asking for : a step by step video of how to install the GPMC using a GUI or a commandline from Jeremy Moskowitz, one of our...

If you couldn't make it to the TechEd Australia 2009 conference in the Gold Coast, you missed a lot of great presentations! Luckily, they were recorded and published here: What’s new in Win7/Server 2008 R2 (Gutnik) SRV310 http://www.msteched...