Ali’s Knowledge Base

Gpotool (gpotool.exe) is an advanced Group Policy troubleshooting tool that’s included in the Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000 Server resource kits. You can find information about the Windows 2003 version of Gpotool in the resource kit and at Microsoft Web site. You can download the Win2K Server version of Gpotool at Microsoft Web site.

Gpotool performs the following tasks:

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Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) introduces a new registry subkey that lets you mark USB-based storage devices such as memory sticks as read-only devices. This is a useful security capability that can prevent users from copying data from their systems and taking that data offsite via a USB device. To enable the USB write protection, perform the following steps:

Start the registry editor (regedit.exe).
Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies subkey. (Create the StorageDevicePolicies subkey if it doesn’t already exist.)
From the Edit menu, select New, DWORD Value.
Type the name WriteProtect and press Enter.
Double-click the new value and set it to 1. Click OK.
Close the registry editor.
Restart the computer.

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XP displays the Windows Tour balloon prompt the first 3 times you logon to XP. If you want to suppress the XP Tour, use the following XP registry hack:

Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Key: Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\Tour
Name: RunCount
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 0

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Opening a folder containing a large number of AVI file can open quite slowly because the OS has to open each AVI file and extract info from AVIs. If you have a large collection, you can speedup XP’s folder access to blocking it from automatically extracting this info. Doesn’t hurt anything, the OS will read the info if you open the AVI.

Rename the key by placing a minus in front of the keyname to enhance file system speed when working with AVIs : change HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E} to -{87D62D94-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}

Symptom: When installing VMware 4.5.1, my system has hung during installing VMware Authorization service. No way but to reset the system. But, this leads to failure of uninstallation.

If you try a clean install of 4.0.x it works fine on the same system.

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