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Group Policy and WMI filtering slowness.
Having spent time investigating slow network logons, I dislike using WMI for Group Policy filtering. It just adds a layer of slowness to logons. WMI filtering does has it’s place, and I do still use,...
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400 Bad Request and Internet Explorer.
The customer reported that they were unable to access our company intranet site. They were getting an "400 Bad Request" error from Internet Explorer. So what did I do? I picked up the phone and asked...
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Slow startup and/or logon times with Windows 7?
Our users were complaining of slow startup and logon performance with our Windows 7 fleet. We got Microsoft in. One of the things they recommended was deploying two hotfixes: An update that improves...
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Bypassing Internet Explorer Group Policy lockdowns.
We lock down Internet Explorer, to prevent our non IT-savvy staff from changing settings which will break their internet access. We apply those same settings to ourselves, which isn’t as bad as it...
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Configuring DNS Suffix Search List via Group Policy
It seemed like a good idea at the time, configure the DNS Suffix Search List centrally so everyone gets the same thing. The wheels fell off when I went to configure the 15th domain suffix. The DNS...
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Saturday Link Roundup
Group Policy Search – powered by Windows Azure. How to bring harmony to your mixed wired and wireless networks The article discusses several different ways to cause your WiFi enabled Windows PCs to...
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Disabling Windows Update via Group Policy
You can do this via Group Policy via Computer Configuration –> Administrative Templates –> Windows Components –> Windows Update –> Configure Automatic Updates. BUT It seems that Windows...
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Getting a list of printers published in an Active Directory domain
So I need to get a list of print servers and printers in the domain. Using Powershell. Looking around the interwebs, I found a PowerShell commandline here which formed the basis of this commandline:...
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Network drives were dropping out
Network drives were dropping out. We were also seeing 15+ minutes slow logon times at some remote sites. We’d mostly see the slow logon times with Windows 7. We’d see the “network drives dropping...
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So where, oh where is “AGPM.ADM”?
Despite several Microsoft Advanced Group Policy Management pages saying You can centrally configure optional logging and tracing for Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) using Administrative...
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Getting a list of users in an AD Group. using Vbscript.
I much prefer using Quest to do this (see this post), but I needed to use Vbscript as I had to output the results into an Excel spreadsheet. If you look around the internet, you’ll find plenty of...
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Getting a list of users in your AD domain via Powershell
Get-ADUser -Filter * -Properties HomeDirectory,LastLogonDate | Select-Object Name, LastLogonDate, HomeDirectory will cause the following to display Name LastLogonDate HomeDirectory ----...
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“Index was outside the bounds of the array” error with AGPM
… when trying to edit a Group Policy Preference which uses Item Level Targetting. Using AGPM. The underlying cause it that only AGPM 4.0 SP3 and later clients that support Windows 10. So if you are...
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What happens if my Windows Domain time clock is fast …
… and I want to change it back? It depends on the operating system. The latest documentation from Microsoft states MaxAllowedPhaseOffset Registry path...
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Consolidated list of AGPM resources
The bulk of these links are from the Microsoft Canberra Premier Field Engineering Team Blog November 2015 post. Setup Choosing which Version of AGPM to install Advanced Group Policy Management (Setup...
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Saturday Link Roundup–Group Policy, Kerberos, BranchCache
Group Policy Group Policy Notes Group Policy Preferences vs Group Policies |Where to look for policies that have been applied to the user and computer Target Group Policy Preferences by Container, not...
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AppLocker, ActiveSetup, Group Policy; all the dumb things
Welcome, strangers, to the showI’m the one who should be lying lowSaw the knives out, turned my backHeard the train coming, stayed out on the trackIn the middle, in the middle, in the middle of a...
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AppLocker and applications which install in the users profile directory.
(shout out to: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft’s SharePoint Designer) Gee thanks guys. We implemented AppLocker to improve our IT security, and you chaps decided to be clever. The typical...
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So what does the Group Policy Preferences Drive Mapping log file contain?
Once you enable the logging via Group Policy, you’ll end up with a log file which contains: Environment variable dump Group Policy settings Drive mapping lists (but not the actual path) If you are like...
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Assorted Active Directory things
Powershell Getting a list of users in your AD domain via Powershell Getting a list of printers published in an Active Directory domain Detecting inactive computers in your domain: Get-ADComputer...
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