by Darren Mar-Elia | Mar 5, 2026 | Group Policy, Group Policy Blog, Group Policy Management, Tips & Tricks
If you’ve worked with Group Policy for any length of time, you’ve probably heard the term ‘registry tattooing’. The concept dates back to NT 4.0 System Policies, for those Windows veterans who remember it. Tattooing occurred when a registry-based policy...
by Darren Mar-Elia | Feb 16, 2026 | Group Policy, Group Policy Management, Tips & Tricks
Group Policy uses a complex, at times inconsistent, model to store configured settings in a Group Policy Object (GPO). This stems from the historical development of Group Policy. While a central team at Microsoft built the Group Policy infrastructure, individual...
by Darren Mar-Elia | Jan 20, 2026 | Tips & Tricks
On Twitter/X I saw a thread about managing Windows Services using Group Policy. The poster talked about using the setting area under Computer Configuration\Policies\Windows Settings\Security Settings\System Services to control Windows Service startup settings (e.g.,...
by Kevin Sullivan | Jan 12, 2026 | Cloud, General, Group Policy, Group Policy Design, Tips & Tricks, Windows Intune
As organizations move from traditional on-premises Group Policy to cloud-based device management with Microsoft Intune, a common challenge emerges: what to do with existing custom ADMX files. These files often represent years of investment in policy enforcement for...
by Darren Mar-Elia | Dec 15, 2025 | Group Policy, Group Policy Management, Tips & Tricks
For more than two decades, administrators have relied on Group Policy to centrally manage and configure settings across users and computers within their domains. However, this powerful tool wouldn’t be of much use without the ADMX file, which defines and structures...
by Darren Mar-Elia | Sep 5, 2023 | Tips & Tricks
I have to say that after 25 years of messing around with Group Policy, I am constantly amazed by the new things I still learn about the technology and it’s behavior. Especially when those things are substantial and weird. Such was my experience last week when a...
