Interested in learning more about Window SteadyState? Sign-up for the One-Day Advanced Group Policy Workshop (XP/Vista forcus). Vist http://www.gpanswers.com/workshop/courses/10 and sign up today! (private class available too)
This one-day class can be taken on its own, or after completing the two-day intensive or three-day less-intensive workshop. Here's an overview of what you'll learn in your Advanced Group Policy 1-Day Intensive Training.
Part 1: Total Lockdown with Microsoft SteadyState (aka the Shared Computer Toolkit v 2.0)
You have public computers, kiosk computers, library computers. And you want to let the good guys run specific applications and get to specific network locations. And you want to keep the bad guys out and prevent them from making changes to your machines. What are you going to do?
- SteadyState prerequisites
- Installing SteadyState
- Configuring a public profile
- Configuring an alternate profile (Teacher vs. Student)
- Utilizing Windows Disk Protection
- Deploying and Configuring SteadyState with Group Policy and scripts
Part 2: Group Policy Tools
Microsoft offers a wealth of tools that each do a specific job to help you troubleshoot Group Policy problems. In this session, we'll walk through a toolbox full of goodies you can use to streamline your processes, troubleshoot easier, and get to the heart of what's ailing your systems.
- Log files for Group Policy enhanced logging
- Group Policy resource kit tools
- PolicySpy
- GPMonitor
- GPInventory
- Free add-on tools from third-party vendors
Part 3: ADM / ADMX Files and Registry punches
One of the key tasks that all administrators want to do is to push out their own registry tweaks. This becomes a problem using Group Policy, because the interface is troublesome to work with. Instead, you can create ADM and ADMX files to do the work for you, and once performed, you can recycle these ADM and ADMX files and provide them to other administrators.
Additionally, some third party tools are useful here to help with this task.
- Creating ADM and ADMX files
- Converting ADM files to ADMX files
- Using tools to create ADM and ADMX files
- Using 3rd party tools to make remote registry changes
Part 4: Test Labs and Migration Tables
Creating your GPOs in the "live" environment to test isn't such a hot idea. A lot can go wrong. To that end, a best practice is to test your GPOs in a test lab first, then get them into production.
- Setting up your test lab
- Backing up the files
- Importing them
- Dealing with UNC and Group membership problems
