I confess: I like group policies. They are and have always been a great way of managing computer and user settings ever since their conception and introduction with Windows 2000. Of course, at the beginning management tools were nonexistent. But we were so happy not to have to rely on NT4’s system policies any more that we did not even notice. Then came GPMC, and life started to become truly great. RSOP! Group Policy modelling! Those are great tools for every admin! Continue reading ‘Group Policy Preferences: Why Windows Server 2008 Will Change the Way You Work’
Monthly Archive for November, 2007
I recently had the requirement to refresh the Windows desktop after certain changes had been made to Explorer’s registry entries. This seems simple at first: klick on any item on the desktop and then press F5. It wasn’t, though. The registry changes would be made upon logon by a software installation agent. It was expected by the customer that the end user see the the effects of the change immediately without any user intervention. That sent me hunting for a solution on the internet. Continue reading ‘Free Tool: Refresh the Desktop Programmatically’
My colleague Nicholas Dille has started his own blog. Nicholas is a very clever guy whose opinion I value very much. I have often worked and laughed with him in the past couple of years. It has always been both fun and technically challenging. Expect interesting, little-known and well-researched technical content from him.
Update: The ADM file can now be downloaded here.
I recently came across a post in the Windows Server Performance Team’s blog that lists several registry values which can be used to tune Explorer’s SMB performance by modifying the following:
- Searches for Desktop.ini files used for folder customization
- Periodic refreshes of folder contents
- Searches for supporting library (.dll) files
- Individual file details and attributes pulled for each file
- Thumbnail extraction Continue reading ‘Soup Up Your Terminal Server: Optimizing Explorer’s Network Performance’
