Group Policy Blog by Darren Mar-Elia (The “GPOGUY”)
Windows RT and Group Policy — Or Not
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...
New Article Posted on “Best Practices for Group Policy Design”
Just a quick FYI to let folks know that my latest article for Windows IT Pro Magazine is now posted on their website. In this article, I cover some of the fundamental issues around AD design as it relates to Group Policy, as well as talk about performance-related...
Finding Empty Group Policy Objects
It's often the case in larger Group Policy environments, that over time you collect so many GPOs, that you no longer know what all of them do or what's contained within them. If you're in the process of trying to cleanup or streamline your GPOs, then finding EMPTY...
Interesting “Bug” in GroupPolicy Folder Redirection results in lost data
One of the members of my gptalk mailing list posted this very informative email today regarding some issues he encountered with Folder Redirection. I figured it was worthwhile to re-post it here for everyone's benefit. Hope everyone finds it useful! Darren...
New Version of SDM Software GPO Compare Ships!
Just wanted to drop a quick note to let folks know that we just shipped version 2.6 of GPO Compare! This is an incremental update but it includes some key new features, including support in our GPO Compare PowerShell cmdlet for comparing GPO Exporter snapshots. This...
Cleaning Group Policy When Removing a Machine from the Domain
A recent thread on Mark Minasi's forum site reminded me of a topic that comes up every once in a while--namely, how do you cleanly remove Group Policy settings from a machine that has been removed from an AD domain. The answer is to avoid the problem in the first...
Vote for SDM Software’s Group Policy Products!
Windows IT Pro Magazine is holding their annual Community Choice Awards for IT products. SDM Software has three products nominated this year, as follows: Best Active Directory & Group Policy Product SDM Software GPO Reporting Pak SDM Software Group Policy...
Windows 8 Group Policy Settings: Blocking Connected Accounts
Whenever a new Windows OS ships, there's always the inevitable period of discovery--especially for us Group Policy geeks--where we learn about all the new settings that come in GP, and how or whether we can control new OS features using Group Policy. Such was the case...
Managing Group Policy in a Windows 8 World
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...
Best Practices for Group Policy Design Talk — Slides Posted
Last Tuesday, I gave a talk locally in San Francisco at the Pacific IT Pros monthly meeting, on "Best Practices for Group Policy Design". It was largely based on the talk I gave at TechEd 2012 this past June, related to how to make good decisions around your GPO...