Windows 10 Administrative Templates

Have you been upgraded to Windows 10 yet? Are you a fan? I am. I've been working with and running Windows 10 on most of my home clients for months now. My work computer just upgraded today with little fan fare. One minor issue where Lenovo had a new Win10 Driver for a mini-port/DisplayLink device. Once I updated that driver all seems lovely!

As you may have seen from Group Policy MVPs and other enthusiasts and writers out there, the Windows 10 Settings spread sheet has arrived. I can't tell you how many times I have anxiously awaited the new spreadsheet. I've read through and studied far too many of these that I like to admit. 

If you haven't used the spreadsheet before don't be over whelmed. It is actually quite whelming, it is not over-whelming, nor is it under-whelming... it is just whelming. I literally yawned as I typed that sentence.

It is however cool and interesting. Knowledge of what settings you can manage for these new clients is super important and this spreadsheet is key to that knowledge.

Some Highlights

If you take a look at and filter on the column called 'New in Windows 10' you will find that there are 201 Administrative Template settings that are labeled as New in Windows 10. 

That is 139 Machine settings and 62 user settings. They are in a lot of ADMX files... 46 files to be close. There is one new setting in the grouppolicy.admx file. One setting to prevent programs from loading untrusted fonts. This setting actually has an interesting 'Audit' mode which allows you to see if blocking untrusted fonts makes bad things happen. Seems interesting, we'll see if it is useful. There are a few AppX related settings, there are many additions to inetres.admx and there are 20 settings in microsoftedge.admx.

Managing Edge will be new and it will interesting to see how people are using the new browser. I'll have to add some Edge customization's to my <gratuitous plug>"Managing Group Policy and Active Directory with PowerShell" session at Spiceworld on September 25th! </gratuitous plug>.

There is a new setting related to Credential Providers. I'm sure my friends at Specops Software will be interested in that one! 

Summary

Just a brief overview, check out the spreadsheet and the actual ADMX files at these links..

• ADMX Files
• Settings Spreadsheet

I'll continue to dive in to see what other interesting stuff is in there. I'll take a look at the security tab and put up an overview soon.

Enjoy!

Kevin