Handy Windows 7 GPO Policies

The official roll-out of Windows 7 has begun in my office.  We are doing a round of hardware refreshing for some end users and with that comes Windows 7 and Office 2010. Here are a couple handy GPO settings we've used to make our lives easier.

Verbose Startup and Shutdown - by default, Windows 7 will just display "please wait..." while it handles it's startup and shutdown processes.  If you find the verbosity of Windows XP handy, likely displaying the name of software that's being installed automatically, you'll want to change use these policies.

Computer Configuration - Policies - Administrative Templates  - System - Verbose vs normal status messages = Enabled

Computer Configuration-Policies - Administrative Templates - System - Remove Boot / Shutdown / Logon / Logoff status messages = Disabled

Let Users Install Printers - Windows 7 increased security and UAC will prompt standard users for administrative credentials before adding a printer because the driver store is a protected area.  If running around to help every user who's trying to add another network printer isn't your cup of tea, try these policies to give the standard user a little bit more power.

Computer Configuration - Policies - Administrative Templates - Printers - Point and Print Restrictions = Disabled

User Configuration - Policies - Administrative Templates - Control Panel - Printers - Point and Print Restrictions = Disabled

What's A Techie To Do?

Or rather, what have I been up to lately?

Been doing a lot of "spring" cleaning at the office. Trying to tie up loose ends on lots of little projects.

1) Upgrading Shoretel - I've been using Shoretel since Shoretel 5. We've been through several upgrades since then and last week moved to Shoretel 12.3.  We have a fabulous reseller that did most of the work for me. Sometimes it's nice to just sit back and watch the magic. The trickiest part was getting the MSI file for the new desktop software, Shoretel Communicator, out of the setup file so I could deploy it with a GPO.  This guy had a good blog post that helped me out.

2) Removal of Exchange 2003 - Back in October I migrated our mail to Exchange 2010 SP1. Our old server had going through several stages of being decommissioned and had been left turned off for several months as other more pressing project got to me. I finally turned it back on and ran the setup program to remove it.  It didn't go completely flawlessly, but most issues were resolved by fixing a few public folder replication issues and then deleting the server from the Exchange 2003 ESM.

3) Training for Windows 7 and Office 2010 - We have finally reached the point where we are doing a bunch of hardware refreshes for staff in the office.  That means moving from XP / Office 2007 to Windows 7 and Office 2010.  I'm not doing the hardware deployments, but I'm responsible for providing basic training to the staff so they are prepared for some of the changes that will come.  My first two sessions were this week and I concentrated a lot on the new start menu and taskbar in Windows 7.  Also, Outlook 2010 has quite a few navigation changes that are notable.

4) De-cluttering My Desk - While not a super-techie endeavor, it needed to be done. I trashed piles of CDs and DVDs of very dated software, including diskettes for installing Windows 2000 Server. Diskettes!! Ah!!  If anyone is looking for the DVD to install Windows 95, I'm your girl. I'm hanging that in my cube for decoration.