Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category

Restrict Domain Computers From Ripping CD’s on WMP!

Often times in a group policy environment it can be a pain to keep your users in check.  They might try to treat their workstation as a personal computer by bringing in music cds and ‘ripping’ them onto their local storage.  This can create a huge nightmare for any IT staff trying to control a local storage quota and can even degrade performance of the local workstation.  Luckily theres a solution; by forcing the user to use the ‘corporate’ skin for windows media player, the rip option is no longer available.  Try these steps to enforce a clean media player environment for your users.

First open the group policy you want to modify and navigate to the follow setting:

Navigate to the following setting.

Select enable and input the skin you would like to enforce.

Ping Returning Beep + Symbols?

Corrupt Winsock

So if you’ve ever gotten a terrible spyware infection you might have bumped into this little bug.  When you try to ping something the system returns a beep from the system speaker and shows the host as “oy” (or any other symbol).  Heres a quick fix:

Open a command prompt window (Start > Run > cmd <enter>)

Next type the following string:

netsh winsock reset

Restart and your finished.

Enjoy =)