Games on Anything About IT

Group Policy Settings for Windows Games

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:05:56 +0000

In Windows 7 Professional and Enterprise the Windows Games are not enabled by default. But if you have decided to include them in your corporate standard image or users with administrative rights enable them by themselves, you should consider using the following Group Policy settings.

 **Location** **Location** **Setting** **Description** Computer Configuration Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Game Explorer Turn off downloading of game information Manages download of game box art and ratings from the Windows Metadata Services.

 If you enable this setting, game information including box art and ratings will not be downloaded. 

 If you disable or do not configure this setting, game information will be downloaded from Windows Metadata Services.

 Computer Configuration Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Game Explorer Turn off game updates Manages download of game update information from Windows Metadata Services.

 If you enable this setting, game update information will not be downloaded. 

 If you disable or do not configure this setting, game update information will be downloaded from Windows Metadata Services.

 Computer Configuration Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Game Explorer Turn off tracking of last play time of games in the games folder Tracks the last play time of games in the Games folder.

 If you enable this setting the last played time of games will not be recorded in Games folder. This setting only affects the Games folder. 

 If you disable or do not configure this setting, the last played time will be displayed to the user.

Scheduled Tasks for Windows Games

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:05:55 +0000

When opening the Windows Task Scheduler you might see a Task called “UpdateCheck_” located within the Games folder of the Task Scheduler Library.

To enable or disable this Task open the “Game Explorer” within Windows and then select options.

When selecting “Automatically check online for updates and news, then notify me when the’re available” a scheduled Task is automatically being created. When selecting “Never check online for updates or news, I’ll do it manually” the task if existed before is removed.

Adding Games on Windows 7 Enterprise

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:35:35 +0000

When you run a default Windows 7 Enterprise installation, you will notice that by default no games are being installed. System administrators using the Windows Automated Installation Toolkit can use the image manager to enable games within their customized Windows 7 Enterprise installation, but here’s another trick how you can get the games enabled.

Open a command prompt with elevated Administrative privileges and execute the following command:

dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:InboxGames

Take a break

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:37:52 +0000

Remember Space Invaders. ……if you’re in the office, turn of sound :-)

The flash based game can be found here. And if you have read my post about using BITS for file downloads you can download the swf file for offline use as well.

enjoy