While Group Policy software distribution is a quick and easy way to get software around a network, it isn’t without its problems. One such problem is when a computer is attached to a new domain. If your software distribution is the same, Windows will still reinstall the MSI packages. The simplest way is to join [...]

Vista’s UAC prevents standard users from installing printer drivers by default. This can cause a problem, especially if you use a logon script or group policy preferences to add shared printers to the user profile.

Luckily there’s a quick group policy fix that will allow users to add printers without any prompt. Once configured, you should be able to log on with a user account that automatically adds the printer without a hitch.

Notepad++ is a very handy tool. It rocks. What is annoying is that if you have it installed on a server, then you have to run NPP before opening the intended file that you want to edit. Well, no more! Using the power of Group Policy Preferences (which also rocks). First of all, install NPP [...]

I’ve had a problem lately whereby various roaming profiles have the Computer window appear when users log into Windows Vista. I messed around with a load of settings to try and work out what it was – I thought that as the problem only manifests itself in Vista with the new profiles, maybe it’s mis-interpreting [...]

One of the tricky things about managing Favourites for users on a network is that it’s a nightmare to easily deal with the varied requirements of users. Generally, you would set up favourites on a Windows network to do one of the following: Leave them as they are. Users can add and remove their own [...]

Now that MS Office 2007 is doing the rounds, I suppose it’s time to lookat some of its shortcomings. It has a few when it comes to deployment. The biggest nuisance being deployment. You have four options: Install it on a PC manually (not great) Deploy through group policy with no customisations Use a deployment [...]