Folder redirection and Group Policy for Server 2003

This article discusses the Folder Redirection feature and how it can be used, particularly by administrators.

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows 2000 Server have a feature that can redirect specific user folders to server locations by using a Group Policy extension called Folder Redirection. By default, the Folder Redirection feature enables the user to have exclusive access to the redirected folder.

Many administrators want the Folder Redirection feature to enable a user's folders to be automatically redirected to a newly created folder for each user, but, at the same time, to have the Administrators group automatically added to the NTFS file system's access control list (ACL).

Apply company desktop theme via Group Policy

Apply company desktop theme via Group Policy

You could create a custom Windows theme by modifying an existing "default" one by changing the background colour, then apply this by group policy under -

User configuration - administrative templates - control panel - display - desktop themes - load a specific visual style file or force windows classic

The default location for windows themes is %windir%\resources\themes

Copy the style file(s) to all machines or a network location and in conjunction with the above GPO specify the desktop background and job should be done...

Group policy to show "recent items" in Windows 7 menu

Group policy to show "recent items" in Windows 7 menu

There is a confirmed bug with Windows 7 / group policy around this setting.

The scenario is as follows:

• Windows 7 disables Recent Items in the Start Menu by default
• You want to enable Recent Items via group policy
• You configure ‘User configuration\Policies\Administrative templates\Start menu and taskbar\Remove recent items menu from start menu’  and set this to ‘disabled’

Even though you have implemented the above setting, Recent Items still doesn’t show up

This is a bug and the workaround is to add a registry entry HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Start_ShowRecentDocs and set this REG_DWORD value to 1.

Banish UAC

Banish UAC

For Windows 7 Ultimate, Business or Enterprise edition which has Local Group Policy, or computer joined to domain and has Active Directory-based GPO, the group policy can be used to disable UAC for local computer or many computer across large networks at once.

How to disable IPv6 via Group Policy

How to disable IPv6 via Group Policy

Just a quick one: I used this link to set up a group policy to disable IPv6 for my Windows 7 machines.