Darren Mar-Elia talks about 2011 and looks forward to the new year for SDM Software and GPOGUY.COM

Updated WMI Filter Test Utility now provides timing data that lets you determine if a given WMI filter will take too long to process.

Check out the latest update to the Registry Policy Viewer tool (version 1.2), which now includes export to CSV and copy-to-clipboard features!

Check out my new blog on a script that Microsoft provides for backing up and restoring the local GPO!

GPOGUY.COM and SDMSoftware.com founder Darren Mar-Elia is now using Twitter to communicate useful tidbits related to Group Policy. You can find him at www.twitter.com/grouppolicyguy!

New Powershell cmdlets that let you retrieve GPO version information and "touch" GPO versions on a GPO.

The commercial "wing" of GPOGUY.COM, SDM Software, has shipped a cool new product called GPO Compare. This product lets you graphically compare the differences between two GPOs and output those differences to reports. Check it out!

Fellow Group Policy MVP Alan Cutherberson, of SysProSoft, has gone through the trouble of converting the Office 2003 ADM files to the Vista/2008 ADMX version (presumably just for English!). Check them out at http://www.sysprosoft.com/adm_to_admx.shtml

We've updated the WMI Filter Test Utility to support WMI Filters that contain multiple WQL statements (queries). Check out the new version 1.0.3!

If you're using GP-based security group filtering to control GP processing by computers, then you know that, normally, when you need to make a change to a computer's group membership, it must be rebooted to pick up that change. However, check out this blog posting I wrote recently for a way around this:

http://sdmsoftware.com/blog/2008/08/picking_up_computer_group_memb.html

The new Group Policy book is out, published as part of the 7-book Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit, 2nd edition and also available individually for sale!! The book, called the "Windows Group Policy Guide", can also be purchased as part of the complete Resource Kit.

I just wanted to let everyone know that Microsoft Press has released a new version of the popular "Goup Policy Guide" book that fellow GP MVP Derek Melber and I contributed to a couple of years ago. This time Derek took the project on himself and the result is a great companion for navigating the new features within Group Policy in Server 2008 and Vista! Everyone who is doing anything with Group Policy should have this book on their desk!

Microsoft has released a nice paper describing how to use the new Group Policy features in Vista. There is a link to it here. It also includes an explanation of why logon scripts sometimes won't work in Vista and the workaround.

SDM Software ships the new Desktop Policy Manager product to simplify desktop configuration management using Group Policy!

New PowerShell version of RGPRefresh remote GP refresh utility now available on the SDM Software Freeware page

New PowerShell cmdlets for GPMC now available on SDM Software Freeware Page

New PowerShell cmdlet new-SDMgpo lets you use PowerShell to create new GPO!

New get-SDMgpo PowerShell cmdlet for retrieving GPO information from a domain.

Updated version of the Vista Central Store Creator Utility that fixes a bug with SYSVOL shares that were redirected to volumes other than the default. Also, a new VBScript that lets you disable the local GPO on pre-Vista systems can be found on the Tools page.

This simple tool provides a GUI for creating the Vista Central Store for ADMX and ADML file.  See more here.

I just did a quick update to gpolog.adm that adds the super-verbose option for userenv logging and also adds the ability to enable Software Restriction Policy logging.

Jorge de Almeida Pinto [MVP-DS] (http://blogs.dirteam.com/blogs/jorge/default.aspx) updated my event log ADM to provide additional Group Policy control of R2 Server's DFS-R, Forwarded Events and Hardware Events logs.

My new company, SDM Software, which makes Group Policy management products, released its first product today-- the GPHealth Reporter! -- which reports on the health of GP processing on a local or remote system.

Microsoft has released a nice paper describing how to use the new Group Policy features in Vista. I have a link to it here. It also includes an explanation of why logon scripts sometimes won't work in Vista and the workaround.

Finally! A new training video--"Using Administrative Templates Policy", on the Training Page

Microsoft released a new free download that let's you migrate custom ADM files to Vista's new ADMX format. It also includes a free ADMX editor to create ADMXs from scratch. You can get it here.

The GPSI Viewer tool has been updated to include Date Created and Date Last Modified fields 

Now that IE 7 is here, you can prevent your users from getting it automatically in a Windows Update download by using a Group Policy template provided by MS. Check out the IE 7 Blocker Toolkit for the ADM file required to do this. Keep in mind that the setting in this ADM is a "preference", not a policy, and therefore must be disabled rather than set to "Not Configured" when you're ready to deliver IE 7.

Check out the port of my gpolog.adm file to the new Vista ADMX format on the gpolog Page

I've got a new whitepaper that I've written, entitled "How Secure is Group Policy?", that's on the DesktopStandard website at http://www.desktopstandard.com/whitepapers.aspx

Lots of tool updates! I've updated both the PolViewer and SIViewer (now called GPSI Viewer) utilities with some requested features. I've also got a new tool call WMIFTest that lets you view, print out and validate WMI Filters against computers in your environment so that you can see ahead of time where they will evaluate true or false. Check it out on the Tools page!

New training video entitled, "Basic Group Policy Troubleshooting", on the Training page.

New training video entitled, "Understanding Domain Account Policy", on the Training page.

New version (1.6) of the rgprefresh utility that adds additional options for suppressing reboots and logoffs during a refresh event, on the Tools page.

New version of Group Policy logging ADM file that includes some GPMC logging is available on the Tools page!.

New version of rgprefresh utility is available on the Tools page!

The latest training video, #100.4 is up on the Training page! This wraps up the 3-part training series on GPMC. Next, I'll be diving into individual GP features.

Microsoft has released a number of new GP-related resources, including an FAQ, information on GP changes in Windows Vista and Longhorn server and information on the new ADMX template format coming in Vista. See the Resources page for links.

Check out the new Group Policy Training page, where I'm posting video training clips about all aspects of Group Policy! Check the ones I have out there now and let me know what you think!

Well, there's a couple new things going on today. The first is that like everyone else on the planet, I've started a blog. And as you can imagine, its related to Group Policy. The nice people at dirteam.com are hosting it so check it out and let me know what you think. Speaking of the blog, the most recent posting on the blog is about the Registry.pol file, which holds the registry-related policy settings within a GPO. Within that blog entry I talk about my newest utility--PolViewer--which you can download from the Tools page on this site.

Added new custom ADM template that lets you set event log size and retention methods for the AD, DNS and FRS logs on your AD Domain Controllers. These logs are not supported within the native event log settings under Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings

Check out the FAQ page for an interesting new KB article that describes a hotfix that lets you ensure that the DC that handles requests for AD information is also the same one that handles requests for SYSVOL information. This solves the problem where a workstation might use one DC to get its list of GPOs to process and another DC to copy the settings from the GPTs for those GPOs.

I've created a page that shows a quick analysis of the differences in ADM files between the new Server 2003, SP1 release and the ADMs provided with XP, SP2. Check it out here.