PowerShell Script: GPO replication status across Domain Controller

Helloooo !!

A colleague asked me to create a PS script to check for a given GPO its AD and Sysvol versions across all Domain Controllers.

So I wrote this script that utilize the ActiveDirectory and GroupPolicy Module.

Depending on the size of your domain it can take a couple of minutes to contact each DC and retrieve the info, so launch it and go for a coffee or something...

In the same fashion as for the script from my last post, we will again be using a system object to collect all of the data together, which gives you the option to pipe it nicely to display the data or create CSV reports.
So here we go:

What the script does: 

This script takes the name of the GPO you want to check the replication status as an argument. 

It then uses the get-addomaincontroller  cmdlet from the ActiveDirectory Module to gather a list of all domain controllers host name to query. 

The retrieval of the versions on each DC is done using the Get-GPO cmdlet with -server option.

All of it is then wacked into a System.Object which is output at the end of the process. 

It is assumed that the ActiveDirectory and GroupPolicy modules are already imported in your session and that you have set the ExecutionPolicy properly on your system beforehand so that you can run the script locally.

How it works: 

Here are a few syntax example to use the script. 

& Get-GPOReplicationReport.ps1 "My GPO Name_v1.5" | Out-GridView

      The script creates a report for the specified GPO and display it in the out.GridView window.

& Get-GPOReplicationReport.ps1 "My GPO Name_v1.5" | ConverTo-Csv -Delimiter ','

      The script creates a report for the specified GPO and display it in the powershell host window as a comma delimited string (for copy and paste) .

& Get-GPOReplicationReport.ps1 "My GPO Name_v1.5" |  Export-Csv -Delimiter ',' -Path C:\MyGPOReplicationReport.csv
      The script creates a report for the specified GPO and save it as a CSV file.

Download Link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3ED4HUGG162V2FQcXJTSW03Rk0/edit?usp=sharing

Script Content:

#Created by toussman@gmail.com on 17/01/2014 

#http://theplatformadmin.blogspot.co.uk/

param(

  [parameter(Mandatory = $TRue )][String]$GPOName

 )

$DCList = (get-addomaincontroller -filter *).hostname 

$colGPOVer = @()

foreach ($DC in $DCList){

$objGPOVers = New-Object System.Object

$GPOObj = Get-GPO $GPOName -server $DC

$UserVersion = [string]$GPOObj.User.DSVersion + ' (AD), ' + [string]$GPOObj.User.SysvolVersion + ' (sysvol)'

$ComputerVersion = [string]$GPOObj.Computer.DSVersion + ' (AD), ' + [string]$GPOObj.Computer.SysvolVersion + ' (sysvol)'

$objGPOVers | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name GPOName -value $GPOName

$objGPOVers | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name DCName -value $DC

$objGPOVers | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name UserVersion -value $UserVersion

$objGPOVers | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name ComputerVersion -value $ComputerVersion

$colGPOVer += $objGPOVers 

}

$colGPOVer | sort-object GPOName, DCName

Well, that's it for this post. 

I hope you will find the script useful and if you have any suggestions or spot something that can be improved leave me a comment to let me know. 

Until next time !! 

PowerShell Script: HouseKeeping GPO Report

Hello there !! 

My first post for 2014 is going to be about a Powershell script I just created to produce a GPO Report to keep track of the environment and also list GPOs for housekeeping tasks such as listing all the GPOs without WMIfilter, all the GPOs linked to a particular OU, ...

None of the GroupPolicy cmdlets that come with the GroupPolicy Module in RSAT actually allowed me to produce an all in one report based on the actual object configuration (i.e.: OU Linked, WMI filter applied, Security filtering, ... ).

It is assumed that you have imported the GroupPolicy module and that you have set the ExecutionPolicy properly on your system beforehand so that you can run the script locally.

What the script does: 

The script gets a specified list or all of the GPO in a domain and returns the following list of properties per GPO and per OU Link:
GPOName, LinksPath, WmiFilter, CreatedTime, ModifiedTime, ComputerRevisionsAD, ComputerRevisionsSYSVOL, UserRevisionsAD, UserRevisionsSYSVOL, ComputerSettingsEnabled, UserSettingsEnabled, SecurityFilter.

In other words if a GPO is linked to more than one OU it will appear once per OU where it is linked in the report. That is the same as the GPMC display tree view.

The report focuses on what is actually in effect on the domain, therefore:
- Links that are not enabled are discarded automatically.
- Security filtering for groups, users and computers that have been deleted from the domain but are still showing as SID in the GPO are skipped and not showing the report.

How it works: 

Here are a few syntax example to use the script. 

& Get-GPOReport.ps1 -All | Out-GridView

      The script creates a report for all the GPOs on the domain.

& Get-GPOReport.ps1 -GPOList  GPOName1,GPOName2,GPOName3 | ConverTo-Csv -Delimiter ','

      The script creates a report for the specified GPO.

$a = Get-Content C:\MyListOfGPOs.txt 
& Get-GPOReport.ps1 -GPOList $a | Export-Csv -Delimiter ',' -Path C:\MyGPOReport.csv
      The script creates a report for the GPOs specified in C:\MyListOfGPOs.txt.

Download Link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3ED4HUGG162LTNWWGNRaENVWmc/edit?usp=sharing

Script Content:

#Created by toussman@gmail.com on 16/01/2014 

#http://theplatformadmin.blogspot.co.uk/

param(

[parameter(Mandatory = $False )][array]$GPOList,

    [parameter(Mandatory = $False )][switch]$All

)

if( $All ){$GPOList = (Get-Gpo -All).DisplayName}

If( $GPOList -eq $null){Write-Host "Specify a list of GPOs!!"; Break}

$colGPOLinks = @()

foreach ($GPOItem in $GPOList){

       

    [xml]$gpocontent = Get-GPOReport $GPOItem -ReportType xml

    $LinksPaths = $gpocontent.GPO.LinksTo | ?{$_.Enabled -eq $True} | %{$_.SOMPath}

    $Wmi = Get-GPO $GPOItem | Select-Object WmiFilter

    

    $CreatedTime = $gpocontent.GPO.CreatedTime

    $ModifiedTime = $gpocontent.GPO.ModifiedTime

    

    $CompVerDir = $gpocontent.GPO.Computer.VersionDirectory

    $CompVerSys = $gpocontent.GPO.Computer.VersionSysvol

    $CompEnabled = $gpocontent.GPO.Computer.Enabled

    

    $UserVerDir = $gpocontent.GPO.User.VersionDirectory

    $UserVerSys = $gpocontent.GPO.User.VersionSysvol

    $UserEnabled = $gpocontent.GPO.User.Enabled

    $SecurityFilter = ((Get-GPPermissions -Name $GPOItem -All | ?{$_.Permission -eq "GpoApply"}).Trustee | ?{$_.SidType -ne "Unknown"}).name -Join ','

    foreach ($LinksPath in $LinksPaths){

        $objGPOLinks = New-Object System.Object

        $objGPOLinks | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name GPOName -value $GPOItem

        $objGPOLinks | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name LinksPath -value $LinksPath

        $objGPOLinks | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name WmiFilter -value ($wmi.WmiFilter).Name

        $objGPOLinks | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name CreatedTime -value $CreatedTime

        $objGPOLinks | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name ModifiedTime -value $ModifiedTime

        $objGPOLinks | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name ComputerRevisionsAD -value $CompVerDir

        $objGPOLinks | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name ComputerRevisionsSYSVOL -value $CompVerSys

        $objGPOLinks | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name UserRevisionsAD -value $UserVerDir

        $objGPOLinks | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name UserRevisionsSYSVOL -value $UserVerSys

        $objGPOLinks | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name ComputerSettingsEnabled -value $CompEnabled

        $objGPOLinks | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name UserSettingsEnabled -value $UserEnabled

        $objGPOLinks | Add-Member -type noteproperty -name SecurityFilter -value $SecurityFilter

        $colGPOLinks += $objGPOLinks

    }

}

$colGPOLinks | sort-object GPOName, LinksPath 

Well, that's it for this post. 

I hope you will find the script useful and if you have any suggestions or spot something that can be improved (I am no PowerShell Guru) leave me a comment to let me know. 

Until next time !! 

FIX: IE10 RSOP Warning Internet Explorer Branding. The specified procedure could not be found.

Whilst working on a new IE10 GPO, I have noticed that in RSOP a warning appears when the GPO tries to process the Internet Explorer Branding on Windows 7 clients with IE10 installed.

This is due to the fact that we cleaned out existing GPOs from Internet Explorer Maintenance settings by resetting them. As explained in this blog: http://deployhappiness.com/tracking-down-rouge-cses-ie-maintenance-addition/  this method of cleaning the IEM setting is necessary, if you consider the following scenarios:

"When you remove a setting in Group Policy, these settings are not instantly grabbed by clients. Because of this, GPOs will keep blank settings if you unconfigure certain CSEs. For example, you removed a setting for folder redirection. Three months goes by and a user returns from maternity leave. She logs into her computer and Group Policy sees the blank settings and makes adjustments. If the blank settings were not there, she would continue to apply the obsolete settings while everyone else has the current configs."

On the other hand having a warning on all your Windows 7 clients until Windows 7 End Of Life is just not right either.

The reason the warning keeps appearing is due to the fact that the Windows 7 GPO CSE is still trying to process Internet Explorer Branding extension whilst IE10 has replaced the IE GPO template on the client under:   "C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions\inetres.admx"

This problem also shows on the client when enabling logging, as per this blog post.
In the GPSVC log you can read "Couldn't read extension Internet Explorer Branding's status"

So you now have two choices and depending whether you are using the same GPO to target IE8 and IE10 users you might opt for one option or the other. 

The first one is to  fully remove IEM references in the GPO. Options to do this are detailed in this MS article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2722241/en-us

If you have a GPO that is only applying to IE10 clients that would be the best option.

Now if you apply the same GPO to machines that could have either IE8 or IE10, I personally would rather keep the empty IEM reference in the GPOs to ensure all IE8 clients do get the instructions to remove IEM settings from their local cache and instead "patch" the windows 7 machines by removing from the registry the Internet Explorer Branding extension keys when installing IE10 on each client. 

To do this you need to take ownsership of the below registry keys and then delete them. The process is documented in this other MS article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2813272

You can then install IE10 and receive you IE10 GPOs without any warning under RSOP or in GPresult html reports.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\GPExtensions\{A2E30F80-D7DE-11d2-BBDE-00C04F86AE3B}

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\GPExtensions\{A2E30F80-D7DE-11d2-BBDE-00C04F86AE3B}

I hope you find the info provided useful and do share your views and comments !! 

Until  next time, I wish you all a great time with friends and family to celebrate Christmas and new year and all the best for 2014 !

GOOD TO KNOW: GPO Override of UAC settings requires two reboots

Recently we got an issue with an application installer that would constantly throw an error when trying to register Oleaut32.dll.

Our packaging team found a work-around by Enabling the Group Policy setting for "User Account Control: Detect application installations and prompt for elevation".

Since this setting is disabled by default in our corporate environment to allow automated distribution of applications, we created a new GPO and set its precedence to apply after our baseline GPO and override our default corporate setting. This way machines can be set to temporarily receive this GPO to install this application.

Yet, when testing the solution we got mixed result.

After looking into those issues, we noticed that the override of this UAC settings required two reboots to be effective.

Our testing confirmed that when the machine first receives the new GPO - by running a GPUpdate /force and then rebooting - although RSOP and the registry were showing the correct settings the application was still throwing the same error at install time.
It was only after rebooting for a second time that the setting was fully applied and the installation worked.

The same was true when removing the machine from the filtering group to re-apply the standard settings.

Although we did know that Computer's GPO settings apply after a reboot having to reboot twice was rather unexpected.... Hope you find this info useful !

How-To Manage the new Java security prompts without using keytool

As explained by Oracle on their web (follow this link for the full details):


"Java 7 Update 21 introduced changes to the Java browser plug-in behavior that enable you to make more informed decisions before running the Java applet in the browser. "

In the case of  "Java application with a certificate from a trusted authority" if the user checks the option "Do not show this again ... " well ... they would not get prompted again. 

Yet some administrator could still want to manage some of those prompts for their environment. For instance to prevent such prompt for their intranet applications.

To do so, you would need to: 

1. Get the URLs of the web pages throwing those warnings. 

2. On a test machine, install a version of Java that is higher than 7u21 and ensure that there is no trusted.certs file under C:\Users\<UserID>\AppData\LocalLow\Sun\Java\Deployment\security (unless you want to update an existing keystore)

3. Then browse each of the URLs you would like to pre-authorize on behalf of the users and ensure that you check the box "Do not show this again ... " and click on Run.

This will create and add the signing certificate information to the C:\Users\<UserID>\AppData\LocalLow\Sun\Java\Deployment\security\trusted.certs file.

To deploy this file you have several options, you could be using a GPO to push this file to your clients, or include it into your java package, or if java is installed in your corporate image simply copy it to the image prior to capturing it.

The file should be copied to the SYSTEM Java security folder - this way it will apply to all users. - under: 

C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\lib\security

and eventually 

C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\lib\security ( If you use 64-bit browser and 64 bit Java add-on) .

Here is a screenshot of the settings of a GPO that was tested to push the file to the clients: 

Should you want to carry on updating the keysotre file to add new applications as time passes then simply copy you existing trusted.certs file to your test machine - as per step 2 above - prior to adding more exceptions.

I have noticed when testing that the method that consists of first adding the certificate as described above and then going to the Java control panel to export the certificate as a .cer file to finally use keytool to add the signing certificate details to a keystore file did not work for me.

I have compared a working and a non-working trusted.certs file and the only difference I noticed was the Alias.  When letting java do the job of updating the trusted.certs the alias created looked like:
deploymentusercert$tsflag$loc=https//secure.entrust.com:443java.util.random@973f09
or
deploymentusercert$tsflag$loc=https//java.com:443java.util.random@a549a8

and this was the only way it would work. 

I hope you enjoy this article, until next time ... 

FIX - GPP Item-level targeting based on Active Directory group membership not working

I came across a GPO change that required Item-level Targeting based on Active Directory group membership and learned a valuable lesson.

Although the Group Policy Editor allows you to type in your group name manually i.e.: MyDomain\My_Security_GroupName, this will not work when applying the GPP to a machine or user.

Instead, you must ensure that you actually click on the "..." button to browse the domain and select the group this way. This ensures that the group SID is included in the GPO and that was how I fixed this  Item-level Targeting issue.

HOW-TO GPP Apply Once and Do Not Reapply

With Group Policy Preferences the settings "Apply Once and Do Not Reapply" can be enforced.

This is a great feature but when testing a GPP that you need to re-work and then re-test, it can be a bit annoying.

Instead of using another machine, you can clean your test machine as follow:

To know if a GPP has already been applied to a machine, the machine stores the Unique ID associated with each  "Apply Once" settings in the registry.

For USER settings the UIDs are stored under:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Group Policy\Client\RunOnce

and for MACHINE settings under:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Group Policy\Client\RunOnce

To know which UID(s) to clear, take a backup of your GPO and search for the "FilterRunOnce" ID in the gpreport.xml file.

HOW-TO Work with Group Policy Preferences F Keys

Let's first clarify that here F stands for Function and not Fxxxing Keys.

I recently was asked why the Group Policy Preferences where applying extra Power Configuration settings to the clients than the one defined in GPP through GPEdit.

Although how to work with GPP is someting that is documented in many places on the net and also in the GPMC.CHM, the use for the Function keys it's not intuitive at all and either you know it or you don't.

Here is the gist of it, when working with GPP some of the settings appears in the GUI underlined in Green or Red. The color  is actually a code to indicate which setting's value will be applied by the GPP and which won't.

As far as I could check in my lab this is true for the following GPP items:
-  Folder Options
- Internet Settings
- Power Options
- Regional Options
- Start Menu

To swtich between enabled and disabled here are the keys:

FIX - RDP Session Disconnecting Randomly

We had an issue where domain users would lose their RDP connections randomly.

In our SOE, Remote Desktop is disabled by default and by design we only want to enable it for machine that are joined to the domain and receiving our Computer policies. Those policies also define specific Domain Security Groups that are member of the "BUILTIN\Remote Desktop Users" group allowing only specific users to use Remote Desktop Connections.

We asked some of the affected users to take note of the time when the issue occurred.
By looking at the event log at the given times no error nor warning where found, but we did notice that this was a large number of SceCli informational events taking place. As per this MS Knowledge Article the processing of the Security Setting Extension is how the Security policies are implemented on the machine.

This drove us to think that this issue was caused by the GPO refresh cycles.
When the refresh takes place the security policies registry key gets deleted to then be rewritten which leaves the machines - for a brief moment of time - without policy settings which in turn causes the user to loose their remote desktop connection. This can actually be seen in the GPSVC.log.

Since the registry key that control the Remote Desktop feature are written in two different locations when applied by the Policies than when applied by the Operating System, the refresh mecanism would cause the O.S. settings to be the only one present and enforced at the time when the users were getting disconnected.

Here are both locations for the fDenyTsConnections value:

O.S value location.: 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server
\fDenyTSConnections

Group Policies value location: 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services\fDenyTSConnections

After manually setting the O.S.  registry key to 0 the problem disappeared.
To permanently automate this fix across the whole platform we added this registry entry to our policies.

As a result when the policy refresh occurs RDC rights are no longer lossed and our restricted group policy setting still ensure that  only users of the "BUILTIN\Remote Desktop Users" are authorized to RDC.

FIX - Windows 7 Password Expiry notification balloon not showing

We recently came across a situation where in Windows 7 the Password Expiry notification toast was not appearing near the task bar.

The only indication to the users that their password was about to expire was the double key icon in the task bar.

Of course that is if they had selected the option to always show all icons and notifications in the task bar.

Increasing the notification time to the maximum of 5 minutes did not help either.

The problem was that for some reason the GPO setting "Turn off all balloon notifications" needed to be changed from "Not Configured" to "Disabled". 

According to the setting description we should not have to do this but setting this option explicitely fixed our issue.

HOW-TO Investigate GPO Issues at Client Level

Hello All,

Today I got a GPO issue reported on a client where RSOP was showing exclamation marks on the r configuration.

Going to the Computer Configuration properties showed:

In that specific instance, this technet blog from NedPyle [MSFT] really did clue me up. But the steps detailed below really apply to trouble shooting GPOs from the client in general.

Whenever I am faced with a GPO not applying properly on the client, I enable logging as follow: 

• As per this technet article - Create the following value: 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
Entry: UserEnvDebugLevel
Type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 30002 (Hexadecimal)

Next create the following folder %Systemroot%\Debug\UserMode\

Next Run a GPudate /force and reboot the client.

To analyse the log I like to install PolicyReporter which is a free tool from SysPro Software on the same client where I enabled the logging previously.

Please note that you have to navigate to %programfiles%\Policy Reporter\PolMan.exe as no shortcut is created by the installer to launch the tool.

After opening the tool as admnistrator, select "Policy Log Viewer", and on the next screen "This Machine"

Although you can analyse logs on any machine with this tool, When installing it on a machine you are troubleshooting, the History tab  can retrieve information from the domain, such as the version of the GPO applied and the reject reasons.

The beauty of this tool is that it breaks down this large log and highlights for you the important statements. 

The Tree view is broken down in the following main sections: 

• Searching for policies: lists each OU where policies are being searched for. If the policy can be accessed and applied and also display the version being applied. 
• Reading previous status: checks the status for entries that are found under the "Windows Settings > Security Settings" section in GPEdit.
• Processing Extensions: details which policy applies which settings to the machine, which policies were checked and were identical, or which policies were skipped as they did not apply for filtering reason or anything else.

When reading those logs it is extremely usefull to know a key word you are looking for rather than trying to read the whole log on your own. For instance with my Site to Zone assignment problem Ned advised to look for  "ListBox_Support_ZoneMapKey"  to confirm the root cause of the issue. Also in my experience the logging on Vista and above is way more detailed than on XP so it can be worth applying your XP GPO (if applicable) to a Vista, W7 or W8 client for debugging purpose.

Well that pretty much wraps it up for today, time to enjoy the week end....

Lets talk about what SOE and GPO's are...

The first comment I got on my blog was from Niall Brady on Twitter  - who runs windows-noob.com - suggesting to explain what SOE and GPO's are, and although its not as fun as documenting technical solutions, he does have a good point, lets start with the basics.

Lets first start with defining SOE. SOE stands for Standard Operating Environment and as it is very well explained on Wikipedia, this refers to "a standard implemantation of an Operating System and its associated Software".
Basically, in my own words, it is a concept in which a standard is established to ensure that a given class of devices (Desktop, Servers, Laptops, Mobiles, Virtual Desktops, ... ) get the same standardized configuration of their respective Operating System and basic components ( i.e.: Flash player, Adobe Reader, Email client, Web Browsers, Office, ... ). Depending on the thickness of the SOE many or fewer basic components are included in the SOE image.

Now, lets talk a bit about GPO's, GPO stands for Group Policy Objects and those are used to configure and enforce given settings (aka. policies) in the Operating Systems and applications.
Policies can be enforced locally for devices that are in Workgroup in which case Local GPOs are used; or centrally for devices that belong to a domain in which case we simply refer to them as GPOs.
By enforced we understand that a user is not able to modify the setting put in place by the GPO and even when using work arounds - like modifying the registry - those settings are re-applied on the next GPO refresh cycle or when the device is restarted.

With Windows Vista/Server 2008 Microsoft also introduced Group Policy Preferences which gives the flexibility to set prefered settings but give the users the option to change those to their liking.

By using SOEs and GPOs in a domain environment devices can be administered centrally, The user experience and company policies can be set and globalized.
In a Workgroup environment they can be used to harden the security of  a pool of computers or simply set a standard however those devices cannot not be centrally managed.

Microsoft has also developped a number of tools that helps implement the concept of SOE's on large scales such as MDT (MS Deployment Toolkit) to capture and deploy Standard Images of a given Operating System; SCCM and the whole System Center suite which includes the same functionalities as MDT with many added features such as Software and Patch deployment and administration, reporting, ... Other vendors are also providing platform administration solutions BMC, Altiris, Landesk, ...

Well, that's it for today, I hope you enjoy the article and I look forwards to getting some comments !

Windows 7 Help and Support not working in online mode

Recently I came across the following issue:

On Windows 7 in Help and Support (Press F1 on the desktop), when switching to Online Help, the following warning appeared:

"You're not connected to online Help, which shows you our latest content. Check your Internet connection, and then try to connect to online Help again. If you still see this message, the online Help service might be temporarily unavailable."


At first I thought this was a proxy issue since the same image was working well in my lab.
I tried setting up the winhttp proxy using netsh but without luck.

Next I thought it was a firewall issue and checked which TCPView what process and what port Help and Support was using on a working machine. But again it could not be the firewall as the remote port used was http.

I ended up building a Workgroup machine on the customer domain, then joined it to the domain and added it to an OU where I blocked GPO Inheritance. Help and Support online was actually working....

After linking our GPOs with IE8 settings to my test OU - Help and Support stopped working so here was the root of the problem.

By gradually modifying the Group Policies settings that were "Enabled" and "Disabled" to "Not Configured" and trying to reproduce the issue, the problematical setting came to the light....  Drum rolls ...

Windows Components/Internet Explorer/Security Features/Mime Sniffing Safety Feature

The fix for us was to add HelpPane.exe as an exception to this feature.
This can be done either by adding a REG_DWORD value for HelpPane.exe and set it to 0 under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MAIN\FeatureControl\FEATURE_MIME_SNIFFING

Or to apply the same change through Group Policies.

That's it for today, hope you find it usefull.

Introduction

Welcome to my first post on my first blog.

My name is Manuel and I have worked my way up from being a Service Desk analyst to Remote Support, level 3 application support and today SOE and GPO engineer.
I really like my current role as I come across a diversity of technologies, issues and people to work with.
I also really feel that I would like to give back to the Internet community that provide me with every day solution for my work by sharing their knowledge.

Therefore, I am undertaking the task to document some of the how-to's, fixes and best practices I use in this blog. I hope you enjoy it and look forwards to reading your comments.

So here we go ....

And for those who would like to know more on what SOE and GPO's are, here is an attempt to explain it a bit.
http://theplatformadmin.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/lets-talk-about-what-soe-and-gpos-are.html

Some registry entries not working in Group Policies Preferences

Today I came across the following issue.

I added some registry entries in a Group Policy Object to enable the Command bar, Favorite bar and Show the Tabs Below the Address Bar as the default preferences for IE10  users. Unfortunately only my first entry "CommandBarEnabled" was working and appearing on my test machine.

Initially I thought that the issue was with the Action being set to "Update" instead of "Create", but actually the problem was that I had copied the first entry I created and pasted it in the GUI, which appears to work in GPMC but definitely did not work on the machine.

Lesson learned for next time, do not copy GP items even if the GUI allows it.

That's it for today, please leave your comments as I would be glad to read from your experience too !!