Server 2012 GPO–Hide These Specified Drives

Prior to Server 2012, if you wanted to hide certain drives through GPO you’d edit User ConfigurationPoliciesAdministrative TemplatesWindows Components, and Windows Explorer changing the GPO Hide the specified drives in My Computer as stated in MS KB 231289.

After upgrading our domain to Windows Server 2012, I could not find that setting.  Turns out the Windows Explorer has been renamed to File Explorer  in the GPO. There you’ll find your settings.   🙂

That being said, it’s sort of an old policy and only hides certain drives.  So you may need this blog post to hide other drives.

Setting NTP Time on ProCurve 3500yl

This is probably true for most of the ProCurve line but since I’ve only performed this on a 3500yl and want make any statements other than “I assume it’ll work on most ProCurve switches”.   Here’s the steps to set the switch to get it’s time from an NTP server such as us.pool.ntp.org.

  • Telnet into your switch.
  • Type Menu <Enter>
  • System Information <Enter>
  • Edit <Enter>
  • Arrow down to Time Sync Method and hit <Space> until it’s set to SNTP.
  • Arrow down one to SNTP Mode and hit <Space> until it’s set to Unicast and hit <Enter>.
  • Arrow to Server Address and enter the address of your NTP server and hit <Enter> (Note: For me I use the ip for us.pool.ntp.org. Since the switch doesn’t offer DNS settings, we put the IP and just hope it doesn’t change…which it does from time to time. If we have a local NTP server, we use this IP)
  • Move to Save and hit <Enter>

If your switch has access to the NTP server, it updated the time immediately for me which you’ll see in the top right of your Switch Configuration Menu.

While your here, you probably also want to set the timezone which is an offset in minutes from GMT.  For example, EST is -5 hours from GMT so you’d enter -300 and save.

Filtering “Assigned To” field in TFS 2010

CodingWhen you select the Assigned To drop down in a TFS work item, you’ll often see a lot of system accounts that you don’t want.  Nikos’ post on TFS 2008 still works for TFS 2010 with the Power Tools.  Previously, I was exporting the XML, editing it, and then re-imported based on Edward Smit’s post and several other forums but once I found Nikos’ post I’ve started just updating it direct with the Power Tools.  I wanted to filter by the Project Administrators and Contributors groups.

I also wanted the ability to “unassign” a task after it had been assigned to a user.   If there’s an easy way to set a work item back “nothing” for the assigned user after it’s been assigned, I don’t know it.  But this is an easy work around.  Create a user called Unassigned and then we just set it to that when we want to let them team know it’s currently unassigned. Here’s the steps…

  1. In VS 2010, click ToolsProcess EditorWork Item Types, and Open WIT from Server. (assumes you’ve install TFS Power Tool)
  2. Select the Work Item Type you want to edit for your Team Project.
  3. Double click the row for Assigned To.
  4. Click the Rules tab.
  5. Select VALIDUSER and click Delete (if you don’t do this you want see users that aren’t valid like our Unassigned user)
  6. Click New and select ALLOWEDVALUES and click OK
  7. On ALLOWEDVALUES, leave For and Not blank.  Click New and enter each of these:
    • [Project]\Contributors
    • [Project]\Project Administrators
    • Unassigned

  1. Click OK

  1. Click OK again.

That should do it.  Refresh you Team Project and now open the work item of the type you edited and the Assigned Toshould be filtered now and should include the option to set it Unassigned.