I recently recorded an episode of on the CIAOPS Podcast where myself and Robert Crane talked about all thing Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 and Group Policy. Note: We recorded this podcast the night before Microsoft announced (see https://twitter.com/#!/BuildWindows8/status/194627936115101696 ) that Windows 8 Release Preview will be out in the first week of June, however our guesses of when the…

With the release of Windows 8 Microsoft has gone back and worked on the fundamentals of the OS to make it more efficient than even Windows 7. This means that the OS does the same (if not more) using less system resources. One of the ways that they achieve this is the way they control the “Group Policy Client” service…

“Group Policy Update” is a feature that allow IT admins to forcibly update group policy on all the computer in an OU. This feature works by creating a scheduled task on the workstations to run the gpupdate command within the next 10 minutes. This feature is fairly simple implementation with the GPMC console just scheduling the task to run remotely…

Update: In case you did not realise…. This is an April Fools….  @slooflirpa is @aprilfools backwards… Thanks to a tip off via twitter from @slooflirpa I have discovered some hidden Group Policy setting in the Windows Server 8 Beta that configures that restores the start button and optionally the traditional start menu in Windows 8. Even thought there have been…

In Windows 8 there are now two different versions of Internet Explorer 10 installed. One is a Metro looking version that does not support Brower add-ons to improved performance and reliability of the touch version of the browser. The other more traditional desktop version of Internet Explorer allows browser add-ons (x86 only) but its controls are not as touch friendly…

As I mentioned in my previous blog post there is a new Group Policy setting called “Redirect folders on primary computers only”. As the descriptions says this ”policy setting is useful to improve logon performance and to increase security for user data on computers where the user might not want to download private data, such as on a meeting room…

This is part #2 of the list of Interesting Windows 8 Group Policy Setting I have found… this time I list all the User specific setting. This list is certainly not as long as the Computer setting list but there are some setting that are just as interesting. This setting is obviously for the privacy conscious that don’t what the…

So this is definitely a policy setting that give IT admins something they have been asking for a long time. I also mentioned this feature in my What’s new in Windows 8 Part #2 post however in all my test I CANNOT get this setting to work. As far as I know the policy setting called “Prohibit connection to non-domain…