Logon time delay hunting example

Here’s a good example of learning some Windows Logon diagnostics. An “unknown” company with AD and Windows 7 clients.

After 15 minutes spent on diagnosing a really slow logon when using Direct Access I changed one setting in a Group Policy Preference item. The following picture shows that the logon time dropped from 400 seconds to under 200 seconds. The tools used were Event Viewer’s Group Policy log and Performance Toolkit. PT is part of the ADK which you can download here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30652

Customized AppLocker messages

Many people ask about customizing AppLocker to tell people why software was not allowed to run.

AppLocker only allows to have a support link to a website but it’s easy have your own on top. What you need to do is to create a Scheduled Task.

First open up the AppLocker logfile to attach a task to the error event:

Then tell the Task to display a message (you should remove the constraint of running without power cord so laptops can use this while without power):

And the result looks like this:

Show Desktop icon to Windows 7

As a few customers wanted to have the old Show Desktop icon (below) back on the taskbar I just created a small program to do it as I didn’t find a shell shortcut right away. You can have it if you have need

Here’s the exe: http://www.adminize.com/ShowDesktop.zip