Disable High Contrast with Group PolicyDisable Accessibility Options with Group Policy
KB ID 0000472 Problem A few weeks back I wrote about a client who was having problems with kids at his school launching the ease of access button from the login screen. And how I disabled the ease of access button. High Contrast After a site visit it seems that the “little darlings” had now worked out that by pressing “Alt+Shift+Print Screen” they could turn on high contrast. And this, which is obviously...
Enable The “Remote Registry Service” through Group Policy
KB ID 0000488 Problem I was rolling out Trend Worry Free Business Security this week, and to send out the client software all the client machines needed the remote registry service enabled. That’s great but it’s set to manual startup be default. As I didn’t want to visit each machine I wanted to do this through group policy. Solution 1. On a domain controller, Start > administrative tools > Group Policy Editor...
Deploying Printers with Group Policy Preferences
KB ID 0000492 Problem I’ve touched on this briefly in KB0000389, I suggest you read through that first so you understand what the requirements are to deploy a GPP instead of the GPO’s you are probably used to. Solution 1. First thing to do is install the printer that needs deploying on a print server. Make sure if your clients are NOT x64 bit that you also add the x86 drivers for your clients to use. How to tell if a...
Adding a Domain Group to the Local Administrators Group
KB ID 0000589 Problem This weekend I’ve been doing a school migration, (go live is tomorrow). Just as we were finishing up today, we found out a client application needed a certain user group to have LOCAL administrator rights on the client machines. I remembered that it could be done and it had something to do with “Restricted Groups”. So when I got home I fired up the test network and ran though it for tomorrow....
Delete Local ‘Cached’ Copies of User Profiles with Group Policy
KB ID 0000602 Problem I have a client who manages the network at a school. They wanted to stop the profiles of their users being cached, in either the c:documents and settings or c:users folders (depending on the version of Windows and profile the users were using). Solution 1. Log into a domain controller or a machine running the RSAT tools, Start > Administrative Tools > Group Policy Management > Either edit an existing...
Managing Forefront Endpoint Protection (FEP) with Microsoft Group Policy (GPO)
KB ID 0000604 Problem FEP is Microsoft’s offering for antivirus, try to think of it as the corporate version of Security Essentials. Just about everything on the net for managing it seems to be geared to managing it with SCCM. Which is fine if you have SCCM, but what if you don’t? Thankfully you can manage it with group policy, even if information on how to do it is rarer than hens teeth! With a Microsoft CoreCAL you can...
Enable the Local Administrator & Set the Local Administrators Password via Group Policy
KB ID 0000641 Problem Microsoft disabled the local administrators account for a good reason, (its GUID it always the same, and its a well known attack vector into Windows). That said, if you have a problem on the domain, and you want to get into a client machine directly, not having the local admin enabled can be a pain. Note: If you deploy your machines via WDS you can add a local admin account (with a different name) to your...
Disable ‘Offline Files’ with Group Policy
KB ID 0000779 Problem You want to disable the ‘offline files feature’ for caching network files and folders. Note: In Windows XP this was called CSC (Client Side Caching). Solution 1. On a domain controller Start > Administrative Tools > Group Policy Management Console. 2. Navigate to where you want to create your policy, or edit an existing one. 3. Navigate to; Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates...
How to Join Windows to a Domain
KB ID 0000661 Problem If you are struggling with the new Windows UI, then routine tasks like joining a domain can be hard to locate. Solution Before you start, I’m assuming there are no problems with your domain and the Windows 8 client can resolve the domain name with DNS. 1. Press Windows Key+X to bring up the advanced context menu > Control Panel > System and Security. Technical Ninja Tip: You can launch the run...
PowerShell – List All Domain Users and Their Last Logon Time
KB ID 0000752 Problem In the past I’ve looked at third party tools to do this but what if you wanted to use PowerShell? Solution Heres’ a cool solution that might interest you also Updating Domain Computer Objects with User and Machine Information 1. On your server paste the following script into Notepad; $NumDays = 0 $LogDir = “.Users-Last-Logon.csv” $currentDate = [System.DateTime]::Now $currentDateUtc...