Group Policy Blog by Darren Mar-Elia (The “GPOGUY”)
SDM Software at #MSTECHED 2012!
All- If you're headed to MS TechEd next week in Orlando, SDM Software will be there in spirit. We won't have a booth there, but I'm speaking on Monday at 3pm on "Best Practices for Group Policy Design". In addition, I'll be hanging out in the booth of those great guys...
Where Are My Group Policy Settings?
One of the challenges any reasonable-sized IT shop has around Group Policy is the need to be able to find and discover all the settings that have been deployed. Something as simple as searching for one or more settings across all settings is pretty tough to do in the...
New Video on Combating GroupPolicy Sprawl Using GPO Exporter
This video describes the concept of "GPO Sprawl", how it impacts you and how you can help clean up your Group Policy environment using GPO Exporter 1.5.
Changes to GroupPolicy RSOP in Windows 8
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...
Using Group Policy to Manage the Internet Explorer Popup Blocker Allow List
A recent thread on the GPOGUY.COM GPTalk Mailing list prompted me to write about managing IE settings using Group Policy. In an article I wrote for Windows IT Pro Magazine in 2011, I talked about the various technologies in Group Policy that you can use to manage IE...
The Many Faces of Windows Configuration Management
I was reading Paul Thurrott's most recent column on the Windows IT Pro Magazine website today. The column ostensibly talked about naming of features and products in Windows 8, but at the bottom, was this interesting tidbit, "Blurring the lines in a way that's almost...
The Word on the Street–Group Policy Cleanup and Consolidation
We're here at MMS 2012 in Las Vegas this week (see a picture of our booth attached to this post!) talking to customers about their Group Policy needs. A couple of interesting themes emerged. One is kind of humorous. More often than not, when someone walked by and we...
Group Policy Health PowerShell Cmdlet Updated!
Just a quick note that I finally got around to updating our freeware Group Policy Health Cmdlet to add module support for PowerShell v2. Hopefully this makes the cmdlet more discoverable for those of you using it in PowerShell v2 (probably everybody!). The module name...
Group Policy Consolidation and Optimization just got a lot easier! GPO Exporter 1.5 Ships!
I'm proud to announce that today we released GPO Exporter 1.5. This new release represents a huge step up in the arsenal of tools for analyzing and optimizing Group Policy deployments. I can't tell you how many IT folks come to me and ask how they can streamline and...
Come Visit SDM Software at the Microsoft Management Summit!
SDM Software will be exhibiting at this year's upcoming Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) on April 16-19th in Las Vegas! If you're attending MMS or are thinking about it, come on by our booth (#129) on the exhibit floor Monday-Thursday. We'll be demo-ing some cool...