by Darren Mar-Elia | Dec 14, 2011 | GPMC, Group Policy Management, Group Policy Tools, PowerShell, WMI Filters
WMI Filters have been available as a mechanism for filtering the effects of Group Policy Objects (GPOs) since Server 2003 & XP shipped. They are a valuable tool in your Group Policy Management arsenal. As the name implies, WMI filters allow you to filter the...
by Darren Mar-Elia | Nov 29, 2011 | Cool New Products, Group Policy Management, Group Policy Tools, PowerShell, Tips & Tricks
One of the cool things about our GPO Compare product is it’s support for PowerShell. The product ships with a PowerShell cmdlet called Compare-SDMGPO that lets you compare live and backed-up GPOs–just like the GUI. We can use this capability to automate...
by Darren Mar-Elia | Oct 24, 2011 | General Stuff, Group Policy, Group Policy Management, Group Policy Preferences, Tips & Tricks, Uncategorized
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...
by Darren Mar-Elia | Oct 8, 2011 | General Stuff, Group Policy, Group Policy Management
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:...
by Darren Mar-Elia | Sep 26, 2011 | General Stuff, GPMC, Group Policy Management, Group Policy Tools, PowerShell
When we created our GPMC PowerShell cmdlets in 2008, they made it easy to get at GPMC functionality within PowerShell v1. When Microsoft shipped Windows 7/2008-R2, they also provided their own set of GPMC-related cmdlets within their GroupPolicy module. At the time I...
by Darren Mar-Elia | Sep 8, 2011 | General Stuff, Group Policy Management, Group Policy Preferences
I recently had a good conversation with a fellow Group Policy MVP about the difference between policies and preferences (i.e. Group Policy Preferences). He asserted that with preferences, the “user can work around the settings (generally.)”. This got me...