In recent days, I’ve become aware of a couple of interesting “features” around Group Policy in Windows 8. Both were reported by other users and I confirmed their behavior on my own. The first issue, which I would categorize as a bug, is the following.
As you probably know, in the version of GPMC that ships with Windows 8/2012, there were some improvements made to the RSoP (Group Policy…
A couple of weeks ago I wrote this post on the MSDN site, reviewing some of the new Group Policy features in Windows 8/Server 2012. One of those features was a new PowerShell cmdlet in the Group Policy PowerShell module called invoke-gpupdate. This cmdlet, as the name implies, allows you to do a GPUpdate against remote target machines. This cmdlet is similar to another new feature in…
I saw a thread on the Microsoft TechNet forums yesterday that prompted me to write a quick post about this behavior change for the Group Policy client service in Windows 8. In order to live in a world of new Windows 8 devices that use less power or may be on all the time (e.g. Microsoft Surface or similar tablets) Windows 8 in general has been optimized to use less resources, especially when…
As you’ve probably heard, Microsoft new Windows RT (ARM-based) platform will be shipping soon (Microsoft’s own Surface will be the first incarnation of this), along with Windows 8 itself. And while I think Windows 8 will be a good touch platform (don’t ask me about it as a desktop/laptop OS), RT is sort of another thing entirely. Because its ARM-based, it won’t run your regular Windows apps, but…
Now that Windows 8 is out (or almost out), the inevitable questions will arise about introducing it into your Group Policy Management world. As with previous versions of Windows, the approach with Windows 8 (and Server 2012) will be similar. Since Windows 8 and Server 2012 will be introducing more new settings into Group Policy, you’ll need to use the GPMC and GP Editor versions that come wit…
As I blogged a few days back, Microsoft has deprecated (or removed) IE Maintenance Policy in Windows 8/Server 2012. And while I think this is a generally good thing, some folks may be wondering how they’re going to configure IE going forward. Well, Microsoft has published some preliminary documentation with guidance on how to get at certain functions that were provided in IE Maintenanc…
Fellow Group Policy MVP Alan Burchill brought this topic up on our GP MVP mailing list and I had to look into it. He pointed out that in the release candidate for Server 2012/Windows 8, the IE Maintenance Policy node can no longer be found within GP Editor, as shown below:
Now, if you’ve followed my blog postings and magazine articles in Windows IT Pro magazine over the years, you’ll know…
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’…
