Microsoft has just released the Administrative Templates (ADMX/ADML) files that allow you to configure their newest Group Policy Administrative Template setting for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 on down level Operating Systems. To be clear this just enables you to edit the Group Policy objects on a down level computer, not make them apply. To install both of…

Update: It’s been pointed out that column D does represent if it is a new policy setting which has revealed many more settings. The complete reference guild to all the new Windows 8 group policy setting has now been published. A quick search through this spread sheet show there are 216 new administrative settings (27 161 Unique) specific to Windows…

With yet another release of Windows (seems like it was only last year… errr… wait), Microsoft has also released a new version of the remote server admin tools (a.k.a. RSAT). RSAT allow you to install the tools needed to manage your servers from a Windows 8.1 computer. You might not think you need the RSAT installed as you are just…

Microsoft has just released the RTM version for people who have MSDN or TechNet subscriptions of Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 (see http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2013/09/09/attention-technet-and-msdn-subscribers-windows-server-2012-r2-available-for-download-today.aspx). The really great new about this release is that there are a few new Group Policy setting, most notably NATIVE support for IT Administrators to configured boot to desktop. The setting name is called “Go…

One of the new improvements in Windows 8.1 is called Group Policy Caching (see Group Policy Caching in Windows 8.1) that makes drastic performance improvements when users are operating over high latency network links. However as with everything there is always a catch…. I have discovered in my testing of this new feature that running a GPUPDATE was taking a LOT…

Work Folders is a great new server role feature with Windows Server 2012 R2 that allows your end user to sync their files over multiple device at work and at home. Think of it as SkyDrive hosted on Windows Server in your own server room rather than by a third party. While there are a lot more technically impressive features…

As I briefly mention in my previous blog post about Group Policy Caching (https://www.grouppolicy.biz/2013/07/group-policy-caching-in-windows-8-1/) both Group Policy Preferences Drive Mappings and Disk Quotas are no longer processed as a Synchronous policy setting. But what does this exactly mean…. Put simply Drive Mappings (and Disk Quota) policy settings will now apply in the background for the users without them having to…

Another new feature of Group Policy in Windows 8.1 is the ability for it to now cache Group Policy to improve performance when processing synchronous policy settings. Now before you say Windows 8 already starts REALLY FAST how can this make it any faster, this caching only really kicks in some very specific fringe cases. Specifically it improves performance when…