Since I posted my Best Practice: Using Group Policy to configure Desktop Wallpaper (“Background”) a few of you have asked for me to do a post showing how to configure the Windows 7 Logon UI Background wallpaper. So below I have outlined the steps (with tips) showing you how to deploy and enabled a Logon UI background wallpaper to your…

Group Policy is of course one of the best ways you can lockdown and configure your windows systems in your environment and one of the most commonly configured setting in Group Policy is the ability to configured the Desktop Wallpaper (a.k.a. Background) image. Now most of you might just say is all you need to do is set the  group…

Microsoft have now released Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 to the web which has a number of new features over the previous version. Windows Firewall integration – During setup, Microsoft Security Essentials will now ask if you would like to turn the Windows Firewall on or off. Enhanced protection for web-based threats – Microsoft Security Essentials now integrates with Internet Explorer…

One of the common lock down’s that administrator apply to Remote Desktop Services Servers (a.k.a. Terminal Services (a.k.a. Citrix)) is to remove all but the essential control panel items. Previous to Windows 7 you had to specify the .cpl (e.g. timedate.cpl) file name of the control panel item you wanted to show or hide however this has changed in Windows…

  Back in the days of Windows XP IT administrators could disable the local administrator account on domain joined computers but still be able to use the account if they rebooted the computer into safe mode (see How to access the computer after you disable the administrator account ). To log on to Windows by using the disabled local Administrator…

The below article shows you how to use Group Policy Preference to setup the registry keys on a computer so that it automatically logs onto when its turned on. While doing this is potentially huge security issue and not something I would generally recommend IT staff might want to implement on computers that are highly locked down and used for…

Microsoft have just announced they will allow small business with less that 10 seats to use Microsoft Security Essentials for free. But even having to configured 10 copies of Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) can be a pain so below is a quick tutorial on how you can Group Policy Enable Microsoft Security Essentials. Update: Microsoft have now updated their Microsoft…

Recently, I have been working a lot with PowerShell to automate the creation of a full AD site OU structure (with Group Policy and all) along with all the necessary delegated permissions. One of the limitation of the out of the box AD PowerShell commands is there is no easy way (but apparently there is a really hard way) to…