More and more people are using Group Policy Management to replace their login scripts. Group Policy Preferences where first introduced in Windows Server 2008 and it gives you a structured environment to control all your global settings. Group Policy Preferences are accessed via the Group Policy Management console.

In Preferences you can configure things like Hide and Map specified drives, Folder Redirection, Folder deletion/creation etc. and of course Registry Settings. On this blog you’ll find a lot of articles regarding Group Policy and the XenApp 5/6 and XenDesktop Tuning Policy’s have almost 15.000 downloads.

Working with registry in Preferences normally takes a lot of time if you have many registry keys that needs to be added, but now there’s finally a tool for that called Reg2xml – Registry Export File converter.

Today I was working with a client helping them with Hummingbird eDocs DM. This piece of software have an insane amount of HKCU registry keys that needs to be applied to every user. So instead of spending a day adding these keys manually I simply purchased the software.

In the Reg2xml tool you point to the source .REG file and then click convert. From the Group Policy Management console you then select to create or edit an existing policy, navigate to Preferences and then finally drag the XML file to the Registry node.

So if you’re in the process of moving away from login scripts and have a great number of registry files the Reg2xml tool will be a huge time saver and worth every cent. The author of the tool is Mark Heitbrink – MVP Windows Server – Group Policy.

In this video tutorial I’ll show you how to install and configure Citrix XenDesktop 5 (XD5) with Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). The process is pretty straight forward if you do them in the right order.

I’m installing SCVMM on the same server as XD5 which means you’ll need to install XD5 first to get the latest versio of Microsoft SQL Express. Always remember to install the SCVMM Admin Console on the server(s) hosting XD5.

Related post :

• XenDesktop Tuning Group Policy for Windows 7 x64
• All you need to know about XenDesktop 5.0

If you’re getting bored of your current default search engine in Internet Explorer or you want the Corporate default search engine to be Google this is the post for you. Microsoft have not made this easy not even with the default Group Policy Templates.

The different search engines providers are located in HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerSearchScopes where the DefaultScope key defines the default search provider. The Bing key is {9F4BEE75-5E51-4568-87AF-67C35184D4B5} and Google is {9F4BEE75-5E51-4568-87AF-67C35184D4B5}. You will see this clearly by clicking the image above.

So to change only the default search provider you can push this key with Group Policy Preferences, but if you don’t have the Google Add-On configured on the client side you will probably get into problems. The best solution is to add all the providers you want on the Windows 2008 Server you’re using to manage GPO or a Windows 7 machine with RSAT.

The subkey FaviconPath which contains a user profile location can be ignored because it will automatically be recreated. If you don’t want search engine suggestions you can drop those 2 keys or set the ShowSearchSuggestions to 0 to disable it. This will make it possible to enable it later by setting the value to 1.

Tell me what you think or if you have any better solution by dropping a comment below.

I have posted a new Tuning Policy for XenDesktop x64 available in the Download section of this blog. Most of the registry keys have been imported from the previous XenDesktop Tuning Tips Group Policy v1.0.

This new policy have been updated to support x64 and some new settings have been added based on a recent blog post by Citrix’s Lead Architect Daniel Feller. Check out the post here : Windows 7 Registry Optimizations for Virtual Desktops.

Many registry settings are automatically set when you run the Citrix Optimizer Tool. I cannot stress this enough, always remember to run this tool whenever you update your vDisk images. To make it easier for the people maintaining and supporting my Provisioning Services Solutions I’ve created a nice script that takes care of all this. Check out these two previous articles that do apply to XenDesktop environments as well : Prepare a Provisioning Services Private vDisk for Shared vDisk and Citrix Provisioning Services for Citrix XenApp Best Practice.

Recommended XenDesktop Resources :

• XenDesktopMaster – Dedicated XenDesktop Blog
• Jarian Gibson’s blog – The Provisioning Server Export
• CitrixTools.net – XenDesktop Tuning Tips

Note :

Please note that these policy’s are provided “as is” and that using these is at your own risk. Please feel free to leave comments below regarding bugs & suggested improvements in future releases.

Do you remember the old days when we used the hide drives.adm template to hide specified drives along with some kind of hide drives calculator to get the proper value ? So if we wanted to hide drives for Domain Users but not the Domain Admins, we had to create another policy to lock it up again. Those days are long gone thanks to Group Policy Preferences, for me it’s the life before and after. Get rid of all your adm templates and 30+ page vbs logon scripts once for all. This will speed up the logon time and make your administration much easier.

To leverage Group Policy Preferences (GPP) you’ll need to administrate Group Policy’s from a Windows 2008 server (just member server) or Windows 7 with RSAT. On Windows XP and Windows 2003 machines you’ll need Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions to properly read GPP settings.

Map network drives :

Open Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) and create a new policy. Browse to User Configuration – Preferences – Windows Settings – Drive Maps

In this example we map K: to the Accounting folder for all users member of the Accounting group. It’s possible to create many rules, if member of group A or B or and so on.

Hide Drives :

In this example we hide C: for all users except for Domain Admins. When you start playing around we GPP you’ll learn how really powerful it is. I highly recommend you start following Group Policy Center for weekly tips.

So here’s what I want you to do now :

1. I hope you dig it – and that you’ll love it so much that you’ll share it with others
2. You should become a Fan of my FaceBook page here

I have posted a new Tuning Policy for Citrix XenApp 6 available in the Download section of this blog. Most of the registry keys have been imported from the previous Terminal Server & XenApp Tuning Tips Group Policy v1.1. There are some Group Policy Best Practices templates around, but the power of mine are that they are ready to go. There are no extra configuration required.

Remember that UPHClean is natively embedded into Windows 2008 and later and it’s recommended to Disable Data Execution Prevention on Windows 2008. This can be done with this command : bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff

Change log :

• Moved keys from HKLMSoftware to HKLMSOFTWAREWow6432Node
• Added more StubPath’s to speed up the profile creation for new users
• Added instructions on How To Import the settings in GPMC within the zip file
• Deleted “WFDontAppendUserNameToProfile“
• Deleted “NoRemoteChangeNotify“

Resources :

• CitrixTools.net – Terminal Server & XenApp Tuning Tips

Note :

Please note that these policy’s are provided “as is” and that using these is at your own risk. Please feel free to leave comments below regarding bugs & suggested improvements in future releases.

Managing printer drivers in Citrix environments have been a pain for a long time. Luckily the Citrix Universal Printer (CUP) solves all these problems leveraging the Citrix Universal Print Driver. I have big customers relaying only on this one printer.

The Citrix Universal Printer is an auto-created printer object that uses the Citrix Universal Print Driver and is not tied to any specific printer defined on the client. Once implemented, it is available in all sessions that use the 32-bit Windows client.

Citrix Universal Print Driver Configuration :

To configure CUP for Citrix XenApp 5 open XenApp Advanced Configuration and right click Policies to create a new policy.

HDX Plug-n-Play – Printing – Client Printers – Auto-creation – Enabled – Do not auto-create client printer

Legacy client printers – Enabled – Create dynamic session-private client printers

HDX Plug-n-Play – Printing – Session printers – Enabled

Right click the newly created policy – Apply this policy to… – Select All Servers or e.g Domain Users

This Citrix Policy will now create the CUP Printer, but to set the properties of the CUP Printer you will need to download and run Citrix Printing Tool 3.1

Configure you preferred settings and write down the “Value of DefaultPrnFlags registry key…”. You could select to save this registry key to all servers, but the preferred method is to use Group Policy to force these settings. This way all the servers in your OU will have the same settings, even when somebody unfortunately change it or servers are reinstalled.

Make sure to you enable the Citrix Universal Printer option.

Check out this article for instruction : Terminal Server & XenApp Tuning Tips Group Policy v1.1. This current version have two registry keys for DefaultPrnFlags, please delete one of them and change the remaining one with the value you have written down. If you have changed CUP Options like quality and paper size the registry key needs to be created manually in the GPO. The key is located under HKLM\Software\CitrixPrintUPDDevMode

Resources :

• Citrix Universal Print Driver – Citrix eDocs

Information from Microsoft KB976002 :

A Browser Choice application is available to users who are located in member countries of the European Economic Area. The application is available to download through Windows Update.

This application creates a shortcut on your desktop. This shortcut lets you visit a Web page in which you can select which Web browser you want to install. Additionally, the first time that you log on to the computer after you install the application, Windows Internet Explorer starts automatically and displays the Browser Choice Web page.

Notes :

• If your computer is running Windows 7, the Browser Choice application removes Internet Explorer from a pinned location on the Start menu and in the taskbar.
• If you do not set Internet Explorer as your default Web browser, the Browser Choice application does not make any changes to your computer.

How to remove with Group Policy :

1. Open Group Policy Management Console and edit or create a new Group Policy Object
2. Navigate to Computer Configuration – Preferences – Windows Settings – Registry
3. Right click Registry – New – Registry Item
4. Type is as shown below

By now you have probably Created a Central Store for Group Policy Administrative Templates and imported the Terminal Server & XenApp Tuning Group Policy, but what about backup? Did you know that Microsoft have created Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) scripting samples that makes it extremely fast and easy to backup Group Policy Objects (GPO). With these sample scripts you can backup all or single GPO’s, grant permissions, import, restore, list and more. Check out the script examples here.

Download and install the GPMC Scripting Samples and create a weekly scheduled task.

Command line example :

C:WindowsSystem32cscript.exe "C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Group PolicyGPMC Sample ScriptsBackupAllGPOs.wsf" "%XA%BackupGPOBackup" /Comment:"GPO Daily backup on %DATE%_%TIME%" /Domain:ctxlab.local

If something should happen to your GPO it’s very easy to restore it, with a script or simply by selecting “Restore from Backup” within GPMC shown in the picture above.

In earlier versions of Windows, all the default Administrative Template files are added to the ADM folder of a Group Policy object (GPO) on a domain controller. The GPOs are stored in the SYSVOL folder. You can see this part in your own domain by navigating to \FQDNSYSVOLFQDNPolicies. In that location, you’ll see a number of GUIDs, each that relates to a configured GPO. Drilling further into any particular GUID, you will find a series of files the contents of which instruct clients to process configured GPO settings.

The SYSVOL folder is automatically replicated to other domain controllers in the same domain. A policy file uses approximately 2 megabytes (MB) of hard disk space. Because each domain controller stores a distinct version of a policy, replication traffic is increased.

To overcome this problem a new feature called Group Policy Central Store was introduced with Windows Vista / Windows 2008. Rather than replicating template files into each GPO’s SYSVOL folder, a single folder is created to store them all. Group Policy Central Store are turned of by default, so to take advantage of the benefits of .admx files, you must create a Central Store in the SYSVOL folder on a domain controller. The Central Store is a file location that is checked by the Group Policy tools. The Group Policy tools use any .admx files that are in the Central Store. The files that are in the Central Store are later replicated to all domain controllers in the domain.

1. Log on as Domain Administrator on the Windows 2008 server you use for Group Policy Management
2. Copy the folder C:WindowsPolicyDefinitions to \FQDNSYSVOLFQDNPolicies
3. Open Group Policy Management Console
4. Edit a Group Policy Object and expand the Administrative Templates node
5. Verify that the Administrative Templates are loaded from Group Policy Central Store (see picture)

Resources :

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