WHITEPAPERS
Windows 10 & Group Policy–Key Steps to Group Policy Success
13-time Microsoft Group Policy MVP & SDM Software founder Darren Mar-Elia, shares highlights on what's new in Group Policy for Windows 10, some best practices for leveraging these new settings, and things you should think about with respect to overall Group Policy...
DSC – Why Do We Care?
What is Desired State Configuration? How is it related to Group Policy? This paper is authored to start a conversation to answer these questions. On the surface they may seem simple, but the ability to answer the question thoughtfully takes some knowledge of what this...
Modernizing Your Group Policy Environment
This whitepaper provides a high level overview of our experiences and recommendations around modernizing your Group Policy environment, with an eye towards getting the most from your Windows configuration management technologies. The paper describes a step-by-step...
An Introduction to Group Policy Preferences
This whitepaper provides an introduction to the features and capabilities found in Group Policy Preferences--an extension to Windows Group Policy that Microsoft incorporated into Windows Vista and newer versions of the OS. GP Preferences extends Group Policy with...
Deploying Software With Group Policy
Whitepaper describing how to use the Software Installation feature in Group Policy.
Automating Group Policy Management
This whitepaper describes how you can automate changes to Group Policy settings using the SDM Software Group Policy Automation Engine (GPAE). GPAE provides a PowerShell interface for managing GPO settings.
Understanding Policy “Tattooing”
Policies & Preferences You've probably heard of registry tattooing as it relates to NT 4 system policy. Tattooing was the effect that you saw whenever you applied a registry policy to a computer or user and then removed that policy file. Even though the policy...
Group Policy Preferences Overview Whitepaper
This whitepaper provides an overview of the requirements for using the new Group Policy Preferences feature, and a quick overview of each new policy area within the product.
GPO Troubleshooting FAQ
(reproduced from my original posting on Mark Minasi’s Forum, with some embellishments)
This is really more of a checklist of the kinds of things that typically go wrong in GPO processing, and how you can check for them.