Category Archives: Labs

Posts about computer labs and classrooms at Williams College

Windows 10 – Useful list of Start Menu related group policies

Posted on March 22, 2016 by

A very useful list of group policies to control the new windows 10 start menu is at: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt484191%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

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Windows 10 – Disable OneDrive access

Posted on March 22, 2016 by

Disabling OneDrive Since Williams uses Google Apps for Education, OneDrive is not widely used here and would likely cause confusion with the individuals that need to use our lab computers. So, we disable OneDrive access with the group policy at: … Continue reading →

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Software – Chrome for Work

Posted on March 21, 2016 by

Apparently, there is a different version of the Chrome browser for “enterprise” users. This one says it can be controlled by over 100 policies …. See more at: https://www.google.com/work/chrome/browser/https://www.google.com/work/chrome/browser/

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Windows 10 – Set login background

Posted on March 18, 2016 by

Windows 10 changes the login background a bit. What I did in windows 7 to change this no longer works. I set this with a Group Policy for “For a specific lock screen image” and set that to c:\windows\web\screen\williamslogin.jpg See … Continue reading →

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Windows 10 – Group Policy Admin Templates

Posted on March 18, 2016 by

These can be found at: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=48257

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Windows 10 – Start Menu or Action Center or Search Bar not working

Posted on March 18, 2016 by

There appears to be an issue in Windows 10 with the Start Menu, Action Center, Search Bar not opening and/or working for some users on some computers. Other users on the same computer are fine …. People are claiming this … Continue reading →

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Mac – R – Where “packages” are stored

Posted on February 10, 2016 by

The software R is open source and people are adding packages constantly. On the Mac these live in the directory: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources/library More details see: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2615128/where-does-r-store-packages

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Mac – Un-mount Windows partition from Startup Items

Posted on January 25, 2016 by

See: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/14231-how-to-unmount-windows-partition-on-startup/

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Mac – Fusion Drive Format

Posted on January 14, 2016 by

In certain circumstances, Bootcamp can mess up Fusion drive formatting. Here is a detailed posting of how to recover your drive. It basically entails, booting the Internet Recovery from Apple Restart by pressing alt cmd R at startup and then … Continue reading →

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Windows 10 – Disable Automatic Updates

Posted on January 5, 2016 by

On certain classroom/lab computers, on certain “field laptops”, and on dual-boot mac/windows configurations we may want to prevent Windows updates from running. With Group Policy, this can be done in: Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update You must “Enable” this policy … Continue reading →

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