I have two (wonderful) daughters and, like most parents, my wife and I regularly face little sibling wars. Our youngest daughter, in particular, is an absolute delight but has - how can I say - a "strong personality". Now, I don't know if there is any...

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...

Awhile ago we had a customer call come in. The customer had a major problem in Windows Server 2008. When they tried to map drives through a script it didnt work. The customer had initially applied a Login script as a start up script and then changed...

Now that you’ve obviously purchased, installed, and started playing with your Windows 7 client, you’re probably fantasizing about all the great things that will happen to your environment when you upgrade all of the machines in your site / OU / domain...

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...

The scene: Backups take up space, but they’re a crucial part of GPO management. Ideally, one would do regular backups (monthly? weekly? your call) but only of the GPOs that have changed. This script will do that for you and print out a nice settings report...

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...

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...

Part 1 of this topic provided two ADM file examples to show how to create and set the default value of a registry key to block or allow cookies for Internet Explorer. In the Part 1 examples, the policy settings allowed or blocked cookies depending on...

We have a new document in our technet library. The Core Network Companion Guide has a section specifically about Group Policy Deployment . Check it out! Or just take a look at James McIllece’s blog post summarizing the deployment guide companion .

Have you ever wanted to configure a preference item to include a specific user name and password? You can do so in several types of preference items, but you should first consider the security ramifications of embedding a user name and password in a preference...

At IT Forum in Barcelona , Microsoft publicly announced the upcoming releases of Group Policy preferences and Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT). Where Group Policy preferences will be included Group Policy preferences , formerly known...

You configured a setting in one GPO and want to know what that setting is across all GPO’s. You want to check that a setting is not being overwritten by another GPO in the same domain (without checking through every settings report). Sound...

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? ...

We released new documentation on Group Policy, Folder Redirection, and User Profiles. Also, we released a spreadsheet that includes Group Policy settings from Windows Vista Beta 2 and we are working on a RC1 version. Step-by-Step Guide to Managing...

Hey everyone! If you haven't seen it you need to check it out ( GPLogView ). This tool is very cool and can really help you drill down into what is happening with Group Policy. It is simple to get up and running and simple to operate. It is primarily...

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...

Here’s a brief summary of everything you need to know about the way Group Policy applies, care of Florian, the always helpful Group Policy MVP. Florian Frommherz is a systems engineer from Germany working in Switzerland. Specialized in Windows environments...

Starter GPO's were introduced in Windows Server 2008 as a download and return in Windows Server 2008 R2 in box + more comments in the report. Jakob H. Heidelberg, a Group Policy MVP, wrote this post on Starter GPO's. His blog features the same post...

Everyone has their own troubleshooting quick checks; here are some that you may know well, and others you haven’t tried yet. Logon/Logoff Some policies applied only after the second logon, not after the first logon. What’s the deal? Anything...

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...

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 blog post is written by Judith, our technical writer, and based on an old blog post by Jeffrey Snover. ( http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/2007/01/11/sorting-out-groupby.aspx ) Jeffrey wrote a piece that showed how to sort system services...

Now available, Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) is the collection of Windows Server management tools provided to enable IT professionals to manage their Windows Server infrastructure from their computers running Windows Vista with Service Pack...

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...