Last week I talked about the “Remove Homegroup link from the Start Menu” option that removed removed the links from the start menu to the Homegroup option without it being disabled. However the setting by itself does not stop a computer from joining a homegroup. So this weeks setting is of course called “Prevent the computer from joining a Homegroup”…

Homegroup is a new feature in Windows 7 that allows users on a small network to easily share all their files and printers with each other with a single share password. This greatly simplifies the process to securely share  information on a home network and it can include both domain and non-domain joined computers. As an IT administrator you may…

This week setting of the week allows you to prefer a custom logon background image in Windows 7. This setting is called “Always use custom logon background” and can be found under Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > System > Logon. Microsoft brought back the option to easily customise the logon background in Windows 7 as this was…

The setting of the week this week disables one of the features in Windows 7 that allowed users to pin programs to the taskbar. This option will be handy if you are in an environment where you want to prevent users from customising the taskbar such as a kiosk or library style computer. The setting can be found under User…

This week setting of the week is called “Change Start Menu power button” which allows you to configured the start menu shutdown button in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. You can find this setting under User Configurations>Policies>Administrative Templates>StartMenu and Taskbar. If you have setup your computer to support Hybrid-Sleep then you should consider configuring this option to help…

This weeks group policy setting on the week is one that most IT administrators will probably want to implement. Now for personal use the Windows logon sound is quite nice however when you have an office packed with computers it can sound like a symphony in the morning as everyone turns on their computer. This is a new policy setting…

This weeks setting is one that has just been mentioned in the AD Blogs Friday mail sack and until today was a setting/feature of Windows Vista/7 that I didn’t know existed. This setting display information about previous logons during a user logon and is very similar to the last logon screen I see when logging onto an online banking web…

The setting of the week this week prevents users from running Windows Media Center on Vista or above versions. Unlike Windows XP which had its own dedicated version of Media Center, Vista Enterprise and Ultimate editions and Windows 7 Business, Enterprise and Ultimate had inbuilt support Windows Media Center. This setting would most likely be used in a corporate environment…