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…

Windows Desktop Search 4.0 is a fantastic local search engine for Windows XP that allows users to quickly search all their local files and network file servers. This is also a requirement for anyone that want to use the instant search feature in Outlook 2007 as it utilises this search engine to perform an index of your inbox. However as…

This weeks Group Policy setting should be used in environments where you still use a logon script. While I implore you stop using logon scripts (see http://www.ihatelogonscripts.com ) they are still out there for a majority of customers and as such still need to be properly managed. This setting is called “Maximum wait time for Group Policy scripts” but it…

In this weeks setting I look at a new Windows 7 setting that reverts the sort order of folders back to the old way it would sort files and folder the same as Windows 2000 (and earlier). This policy setting is called “Turn off numerical sorting in Windows Explorer and can be found under User Configuration > Policies > Administrative…

Last week I showed you how to exclude an individual users from having a Group Policy Object (GPO) applied and this time I will show you how to properly apply a GPO to an individual user or computer. As I previously mentioned it is always best to use a security groups with GPO filtering even if you are only going…

One of the common question I see on the forums from time to time is how to exclude a user and/or a computer from having a Group Policy Object (GPO) applied. This is a relatively straight forward process however I should stress this should be used sparingly and should always be done via group membership to avoid the administrative overhead…