Since the release of Windows 7 and Server 2008-R2 we have about 3000 Group Policy Settings available to centrally configure and manage Windows clients and servers. Though some among us might have worked with GPO settings from the early days on, knowing about the existence of each and every available setting is nearly impossible. It still happens to me that while I am configuring a specific GPO setting, I do come across other GPOs I didn’t knew of yet.

Have we not all been in a situation once, where we wondered whether a certain system configuration item could be managed via a GPO setting? So what would you do? Open the Group Policy Management Console and browse through the settings until you find the setting you’ve been looking for? Yes, that is possible approach and sometimes the quickest if you know in which area the setting is most likely stored. Another approach is to download the Group Policy Settings Reference for Windows and Windows Server spreadsheet and search through the Excel sheet.

Now here’s another nice solution that allows you to search for Group Policy settings without opening the GPMC or an Excel sheet. All you need is Windows 7 and Internet Access.

Open Internet Explorer and go to http://gps.cloudapp.net/ (Group Policy Search)

In the Settings Menu select “Add Search Connector”.

Download the Search Connector configuration file.

Select “Add” to install the Search Connector. 

Select Group Policy Search and type a word within the search bar.

Happy GPO Setting searching!

Having difficulties finding menu and toolbar commands in Office 2010? Here’s a nice tool called the Interactive menu to ribbon guide. You can either download the offline versions here or access the guide directly from the web here.

As written in my previous post, I have just finished installing a Server 2008 R2 to conduct a proof of concept. I have also some PDF documents that I will use for reference. So I was just about to install some PDF reader software, but then I thought, hey why “install” software, there must be something small out there that allows me reading a PDF file without having to install anything on my fresh installed server.

I’ve come across various portable applications, but at the end I found a really cool one called Cool PDF Reader, well neat would actually be the better word, as the executable only uses 651KB and does not require an install.

Cool PDF Reader is FREE and can be downloaded from here.

Refreshing my knowledge a bit on Time Synchronization, NTP etc. and came across this utility. It’s FREE and doesn’t require installation.

The Domain Time LMCheck test tool lets you assess the current time of all the Windows machines on your network quickly and easily. It uses the built-in LAN Manager NetRemote TOD (Time of Day) function to check the time on all the machines in the browse list.

LMCheck can be downloaded from here

Alan Burchill author of the Group Policy Center blog has posted 2 great articles on Best Practices for Active Directory Structures.

Best Practice:Active Directory Structure Guidelines – Part 1

Best Practice: Group Policy Design Guidelines – Part 2

Yesterday I received a pre-release copy of Russel Smith’s book called Least Privilege Security for Windows 7, Vista and XP. The book is entirely dedicated to the subject of running Least Privilege Security (or standard user accounts) on Windows operating systems in the enterprise.

The book has 420 pages and covers the following topics:

• Chapter 1, An Overview of Least Privilege Security in Microsoft Windows
• Chapter 2, Political and Cultural Challenges for Least Privilege Security
• Chapter 3, Solving Least Privilege Problems with the Application Compatibility Toolkit
• Chapter 4, User Account Control
• Chapter 5, Tools and Techniques for Solving Least Privilege Security Problems
• Chapter 6, Software Distribution using Group Policy
• Chapter 7, Managing Internet Explorer Add-ons
• Chapter 8, Supporting Users Running with Least-Privilege
• Chapter 9, Deploying Software Restriction Policies and AppLocker
• Chapter 10, Least Privilege in Windows XP
• Chapter 11, Preparing Vista and Windows 7 for Least Privilege Security
• Chapter 12, Provisioning Applications on Secure Desktops with Remote Desktop
  Services,
• Chapter 13, Balancing Flexibility and Security with Application Virtualization
• Chapter 14, Deploying XP Mode VMs with MED-V

You can download the FREE chapter Solving Least privilege Problems with the Application Compatibility Toolkit  from here

I haven’t read the entire book yet, but from what i have seen thus far, it’s definitely a must have for any IT Pro who working within the Client Desktop management space. I’ll submit further feedback when I have completed the review.

How long does it take to copy 1 GB over a slow network connection? How fast does my virtual application start? Today I came across a nice FREE utility called Network Delay Simulator.

Network Simulator tool allows you to perform network bandwidth and delay simulation (simulate slow/congested links between nodes) on any connection from your computer to any remote node (on the local LAN or remote over Internet).

More information and download links can be found here

Here I simulate a slow connection to a remote server.

Here I simulate a slow connection to the internet

Today’s ToolTip is about a utility called checksum and guess what, it can create and verify checksums. But beside all the other checksum utilities i came across so far this one has some nice features that make it worth mentioning it.

First it’s fast. I created a checksum for the Windows 7 x64 ISO file and it was about 15 to 20 seconds faster than other checksum utilities. Another feature that I like is that it can not only create checksums for individual files, but also for folders and it’s entire content. Checksum fully integrates into the Windows Explorer context menu but can also be launched from the command line.

More details and download information can be found here

Once again, there is always a solution for every problem, it’s just that it can take a while until you find the solution.

Since months I have had issues with “sending” e-mails from my Windows Mobile 6.1 device. I have several mail accounts configured on my mobile, but the one that is configured to use IMAP simply wouldn’t work.

Today I stumbled upon a patch that fixes this. If you happen to have the same problem then download the Windows Mobile 6.1 Hot Fix for Sending POP and IMAP E-mail from here

And just in case your mobile doesn’t show the correct time, have a look at the DST patch which can be found here

Issues with installing Windows Updates? Then have a look at the following Microsoft Support Articles:

KB971058 How do I reset Windows Update components?

KB947821 Description of the System Update Readiness Tool for Windows Vista, for Windows Server 2008, for Windows 7, and for Windows Server 2008 R2

I have seen many FREE Screen Capture tools, but this one beats them all. Screenpresso is a small FREE Screen Capture utility that comes with a lot of nice features and doesn’t require an install.

Screenpresso can capture windows, regions, context menus and objects within dialog boxes. Furthermore the tool includes an integrated image editor that allows you to apply various effects such as adding Text, draw a rectangle, blur a selected region and add reflection.

You can download Screenpresso from here

Those who are following my blog on a regular basis know that I am also interested in the history of IT. Since in these days Citrix (especially XenDesktop) has a high ranking on my personal list of interests, I spend some time today to find some information about the History of Citrix. So here we go:

A Deep Dive Into the 20 Year History and Technical Developments of Citrix Systems, a video from BriForum 2009 (Highly recommend this one, very interesting !).

Brad Pedersen Reflects on 20 Years at Citrix

Significant Events in the History of Citrix

Citrix Systems, Inc. – Company Profile, Information, Business Description, History, Background Information on Citrix Systems, Inc.

20 Years of Citrix History

If you get tasked to do some system troubleshooting and you just want to get as many information possible from a client, then have a look at the Microsoft Product Support Report Tool and the Product Support Reports Viewer.

The Microsoft Product Support Reports Viewer 2.0 can be downloaded from here and the Microsoft Product Support Reports from here

First launch the Microsoft Product Support Tool, which is a self-extracting executable (no installation needed). Once launched you can select the diagnostics you want to execute, then select Next to get the Diagnostic (Data Collection) started. Note that depending on the diagnostics selected, this process can take a while (up to 25 minutes).

Once the Diagnostic process has completed you can browse, e-mail or save the results. When saving the results, all data is stored in a single CAB file.

The Microsoft Product Support Report Viewer provides an interface to view the collected diagnostic data, which consists of several individual XML files.

While the diagnostic tool was running on my client, I copied the content of the temporary folder that the tool creates within the users TEMP folder into another folder. (if you have many folders in your TEMP folder just sort by date, and open the one with the newest date).

Within that folder you will find a Tools folder which contains all the executables and scripts used by the Diagnosis Tool.

So next time you get one of these famous calls to help solving a system problem, consider using this tool to gather detailed system information data.

Today I’ve received a signed copy of Jeremy Moskowitz latest Book “Group Policy – Fundamentals, Security and the Managed Desktop”, so instead of using my laptop I guess I’ll be holding a real book in my hands this weekend.

Jeremy also published 3 FREE chapters:

Bonus Chapter 1 - Scripting Group Policy Operations with Windows PowerShell (co-written with PowerShell MVP Jeff Hicks.)
Bonus Chapter 2 - Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPMv4)
Bonus Chapter 3 - Full Lockdown with Windows SteadyState

………. order this book, it’s worth the money, I have the previous published GPO books and they have been extremely useful so far.

This book covers information about the fundamentals of Deploying Microsoft Office 2010. Get it here