Windows 10 / Server 2016 Group Policies for Customising Settings

glenimp617 · 7 Feb 2017 at 10:02

This is a royal pain,

Has anyone been able to hide options from the new look settings panel, or at least lock them down to stop users messing about?

The ones I'm struggling with (there are many)

Personalization > Colors > High Contrast Settings
Time & Language > Region & Language > Add a Language

If anyone could point me in the direct of some white paper, or guide to follow at least I'll know the area to be looking in. I've manage to lock down some parts, but savvy users can find other ways in.

Thanks!!

glenimp617 · 7 Feb 2017 at 16:28

I'm starting to understand that the majority of settings can only be changed in the registry. Gotta love Microsoft

glenimp617 · 9 Feb 2017 at 09:04

TechMinerUK;30483973 said:
Microsoft wont let us remove those bloatware Windows 10 apps with GPO so this doesn't seem like a shock

after months of messing about, we have now decided upon Ltsb 1607

it's Windows 10 without the rubbish

still struggling with the group policies, but managed to get 95% of it sorted. There are some settings which simply can't be changed.

glenimp617 · 10 Feb 2017 at 09:15

I think Microsoft would say that, as LTSB is without any universal apps (which Microsoft are heavily pushing).

LTSB is the best version of Windows 10 IMHO.

glenimp617 · 22 Feb 2017 at 08:45

Here's a great tip I've been using this week to customise w10 and s2016. MS are lazy and you can't do much through group policies so you have to change registry keys. The issue is that some of these keys are now different from what they were in 2012 so looking on google doesn't always help.

Download a program called regshot and launch the x86-ansicode exe on the s2016 server. Click on shot1, then make your changes. Click on shot2 then compare. You'll see a text file with all the registry changes so you can find which key is responsible for the change. You can then apply this in a gpo.