At TechEd North America 2013 the Powershell team have showcased a new under the covers feature with Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 call Desired State Configuration via Powershell. While you may recognise this feature name as something out of that is in System Center Configuration Manager the technology is somewhat different and has no SCCM requirements. Simply put DCS…

In the keynote presentation of TechEd North America 2013 a new Group Policy setting was demonstrated that showed how you can now configure the layout of the Windows 8.1 Start Screen. For your convenience I have summarised the list of steps shown in the demo so you can configure this option for yourself… when the beta is release…. on June…

Microsoft has just announced bunch of new business related features for Windows 8.1 some of which really stand out. For the vast number of business related features being added to Windows 8.1 it would seem that the focus for this release of Windows is now firmly back on what Business also want. Below is a summary of the features that…

Microsoft has just announced that the next version of Windows will be called Windows 8.1 and confirmed that it will be available as a FREE upgrade for existing Windows 8 users that will be released this year. Notably that said that one of the changes in the operating system include an “options to boot into alternate screens”, hopefully this means…

Ever wondered why the computers in your organisation are so slow? Well Darren Mar-Elia has just posted an extensive article on TechNet called Group Policy and Logon Impact. His blog goes into great detail explaining many of the pit fall’s IT Admins can do that cause large impact to logon speed and group policy processing. The summary tips of the…

So I know this is not strictly Group Policy news however I am from Australia and this news was just to good for us Aussies to not mention. Microsoft Australia has just announced on their blog that they would be expanding their Azure service to Australia. What this means for many organisation is of course they can now start to…

So long ago I blogged/ranted about how the Group Policy setting “Do not show the Start Menu when the user logs in” was explicitly disabled in Windows 8 (see  The must NOT have Windows 8 Start Menu Group Policy Setting). But I have since found a way that you can actually implement this feature (all be it not perfectly) using…

Having been a Group Policy MVP for a while and a contributor to the Microsoft Group Policy forums for even longer I still see a lot of people asking “I am new to Group Policy. What settings should I configure?”. My answer to these people is now pretty much unconditionally “nothing”. That’s right… Nothing…. Of course that is not the…