The short answer is that is takes up to 2 hours for Group Policy changes to take effect for both Computer and for User policies. However, as usual there is more to the story. What is a ‘Background Refresh’ of a Group Policies? Unless you have changed the defaults, Group Policy is […]
by Ian Matthews – September 13, 2010 REQUIREMENTS: This will only work if your domain is running at Server 2008 R1 (with any service pack). If you have R2 of 2008, then you already have this policy templates and so this is a waste of your time. If you have […]
By Ian Matthews December 11, 2008 Last Updated April 22, 2009 NOTE: The author will not accept responsibility for damages as a result of following the suggestions below. They are provided “as is” and intended only as a rough guide. You should always back up your servers System State prior […]
Have you ever wondered why nearly every Active Directory you have seen has does not use the COMPUTERS and USERS Organizational Unit (folder) for day to day operations? We had a client that put all 200 of there computers in the COMPUTERS OU in their AD and their staff could […]
Did you know that you don’t need specialized tools like PDQ Deploy or SCCM to deploy software to your computers? That’s right if you have a Windows Active Directory Domain all you need is very simply Group Policy. CLICK TO EXPAND However, there are two things that catch new IT […]
We just posted a simple article and screenshot explaining how to install GPMC on Windows Server, however the process to install Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) tools on windows 11 is different, So we thought a separate article would be useful. What’s the Difference Between GPMC and GPedit? If you […]
This error is telling you that there is an account that was most likely deleted from Active Directory but is still mentioned in a Group Policy. You have to find that group policy and look for an entry that contains only a SID (a hash of numbers and letters), but […]
Today we had a very cool problem with a client who was trying to add a service account to a Windows Active Directory Group. the problem was that after the service account was added to the group, it would magically be removed from the group within a few minutes. This […]
If you want to disable the Cortana personal search assistant in Windows 10 using Group Policy this is the place for you: Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search . You can also edit the registry locally: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search to a DWORD with a value of 0 . […]
As you likely have found the Group Policy to disable the store (see below) only works with Windows 8 Pro and Enterprise , and Windows 10 Enterprise and Education. This means it does NOT work on Windows 10 Pro, which is super annoying. USER CONFIGURATION > ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES > WINDOWS COMPONENTS […]
If you want to see what your PC is doing during startup or shutdown you can set Windows to VERBOSE MODE. This can be accomplished in one of two ways: Registry Entry on the PC: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Policies\System “VerboseStatus”=dword:00000001 . Group Policy: Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System> DISPLAY HIGHLY […]
If you want to force a background image to your Windows 8.1 Lock Screen you can accomplish your mission using a registry key or Group Policy that sets that registry key for you. Download the Group Policy Templates for Windows 8.1 HERE and add them to your Group Policy Store […]
After some research I was surprised to find how complex some processes are. I wanted a simple Group Policy to deploy fonts and found that the most straight forward way to deploy fonts via GPO was to build an .MSI and then deploy the .MSI. This sounds harder than it […]
If you know Group Policy and your question is really, WHERE IS AN .MSI FOR JAVA THAT IS ALREADY TO BE DEPLOYED UNATTENDED THROUGH AN ACTIVE DIRECTORY GROUP POLICY, you can download my Java 7 Patch 13 from Feb 1 2013 (jre1.7.0_13) HERE. Note that while I have had no problems with […]
If you want to use Group Policy to configure the 10 UAC related group polices so a Windows 7 client will be set to the third level on the slider bar: “Default – Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer. Don’t notify me when I make changes to […]
This one is easy: Download the correct version of flash from Adobes offline flash installer site http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/fp_distribution3.html Copy the .MSI to a location on the network which all PC’s can see Start GROUP POLICY MANAGMENT CONSOLE and right click on the appropriate OU (or the domain root) and select CREATE A […]