Automating Hardware in Windows 7
For all of us desktop administrators out there, automation is the key to our success. Using Group Policy, we can automate the deployment of software, settings, printers, drive mappings and pretty much anything else for our users and computers. Hardware, especially roaming hardware, has always been a thorn in our sides.
Categories: Management Tags: Central Driver Store, Desktop, driver, driver store, Group Policy, hardware, registry
Using Group Policy to specify search order for device driver source locations
The default behaviour of Windows during the installation of new device drivers is to search the Windows Update website if it can’t find the drivers it needs within the local driver store. This procedure can be altered or disabled using the Group Policy setting – Specify search order for device driver source locations.
Categories: Management Tags: device driver, driver, drivers, gpedit, gpedit.msc, Group Policy, Local Group Policy, Local Group Policy Editor, updating drivers
Using Group Policy to Isolate Faulty Printer Drivers
As we have seen in a previous post – Printer Driver Isolation, Microsoft introduced a new feature in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 systems that allows users to isolate unstable printers’ drivers, and in the above mentioned post we have seen how to use this feature using the Print Management snap-in. In this post we will see how to enable the same feature using Local Group Policy in Windows 7.
Categories: Troubleshooting Tags: driver, Driver Isolation, gpedit.msc, Group Policy, inf file, Local Group Policy, Print Management, printer driver
Four Types of Stop Errors
Your Windows 7 computer can encounter different types of hardware or software problems that generate a Stop message. Stop messages are generally categorized as follows:
Categories: Troubleshooting Tags: driver, Executive initialization, hardware, interrupt, IRQL, malfunction, software, Stop error, Stop message, Troubleshooting