“Where is this @#$% policy? I know it is somewhere in this hive” – that is the question to bother each systems administrator. It was a nightmare trying to find a setting, especially for not very experienced one. It seems like we are one step closer to the solution: while sorting out a mess which always is created in my OneNote notebooks after my vacations I ran into a post from Ask DS blog, which told me: “Alex, you can do full-text search through every GPO MS has been created”. Great news, so I wanted to try.
Step 1: go to http://gps.cloudapp.net/
Step 2: Search for something like “screen saver timeout”
Step 3: Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page and find the section Search Results (Yeah, I know – it is “very” convenient) and look for what you are seeking for:
Step 4: Click it and – voila:
you get path to the setting in GPEdit.msc and, what is of no small importance, registry hive where it resides. Of course, we could do this before: find the setting or registry key manually in the Excel file, but
1,,) now it seems a little bit easier.
2) it supports full-text search
2) it is not the only feature the application provide us with.
There is plenty of possibilities due to these new features:
1) We can display the tree of policy or the registry:
2) We can filter out the OSs or software settings for which we don’t want to show up:
3) Copy data from this page (URL of the page, and GPO specific data). Not that it makes it very more convenient than just conventional copying, but lessen the mistake possibility:
4) You can even add custom search to your browser or Windows:
The first one adds the search to your IE
The second is archived search connector to the Windows search and gives you the opportunity to search GPO right from your Windows Explorer:
The latter one is, actually, my favourite: I don’t like going to any site, while I am able to search from my Windows Explorer, so anything with support of OpenSearch is just good for me, including my SharePoint. hope, you will enjoy the features too.