Have you ever spent time troubleshooting a problem only to discover that a computer or user wasn’t in the right security group? Shadow Groups (sometimes called dynamic security groups) can stop this problem! They work by automatically adding objects to a group based on a name, Organizational Unit, or another attribute. So get ready to embrace the dark side of Active Directory – we are about to set up some shadow security groups!
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Deploying Printers with Group Policy Preferences (Complete Guide)
Deploying printers with Group Policy Preferences is the superior way to deploy your printers. Here is the great thing about deploying printers this way: you don’t need anything special and it can deploy IP, local, or shared printers!
As long as your clients support Group Policy Preferences (which runs on XP SP3 +) and you have a print server, you can deploy printers with Group Policy Preferences. Before you deploy your first printer, you need to answer two questions first:
Group Policy Preferences Not Applying? Here’s Your CheckList!
Group Policy Preferences Not Applying? Most of the time, our issues will come down to a handful of items and misconfigurations. As awesome as they may be, Group Policy Preferences (GPPs) gave us a whole new set of challenges and a few new ways to troubleshoot. Let’s go through the top ways to troubleshoot preferences (and learn a few performance tricks on the way)!
Delete Empty Security Groups
As part of our spring cleaning series, I have a quick tip for you to delete all empty security groups.
Get-qadgroup -SearchRoot "DC=Test,DC=local" -SearchScope Subtree -empty $true | Remove-QADObject -whatif
That’s it! For safety, I added the -whatif parameter. It will simulate the deletion but not actually delete anything. If you are worried that your groups are used for shares, you can find out by using this PowerShell Script. If you would like to test your group deletion without messing anything up, switch the group type from security to distribution. If no one complains after a month, you can delete it then. As always, happy scripting!