Monthly Archives: February 2017

Google Drive Sync to a Network Folder

Ed Tech Teach, Staff Tech Reviews

<![CDATA[Recently Google Drive stopped syncing to a network folder.  This has been a conundrum for many of us that put it there so we can access it from various locations.  There is a work around.

  1.  Download the old version of Google Drive that did work.
  2. Uninstall Drive and install the version above.  You can point it to any share during the install process.
  3. Disable Google Updates in the Task Scheduler.  If you don’t it will just update and break itself.  This will disable Chrome updates as well, so it is a trade off.
  4. Make a new registry entry to disable Drive Updates.
    1. Regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\
    2. Right click on the right hand pane and select New- Key, and name it Google
    3. Click on the new Google key (looks like a folder) to enter the folder.
    4. Right click in the right hand pane and select New- DWord 32bit value
    5. Name it DefaultUpdate and make sure the value is 0
    6. Reboot

Fingers are crossed that this works until Google changes it back to allow network shares again!
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GPO for Default Applications

Tech Administration

<![CDATA[You can do a GPO to force default applications for computers in a given AD container.
The GPO is in Computer Configuration->Policies->Administrative Templates->Windows Components->File Explorer.
Turn on "Set a default associations configuration file" and point it to the xml file containing your default setting.
To create the XML file the easiest way is to simply set your defaults on a system and then export them.  Use the exported file (delete what you don't want to force) to set the new GPO defaults.  Open an elevated command prompt and run

dism /online /Export-DefaultAppAssociations:"c:\DefaultAppAssociations.xml"

This will make the file you will then point to in your GPO.  Make sure to put it in a location your users can access.
Examples for Chrome and Firefox.
Forcing Google Chrome
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<DefaultAssociations>
<Association Identifier=”.3gp2″ ProgId=”WMP11.AssocFile.3G2″ ApplicationName=”Windows Media Player” />
<Association Identifier=”.htm” ProgId=”ChromeHTML” ApplicationName=”Google Chrome” />
<Association Identifier=”.html” ProgId=”ChromeHTML” ApplicationName=”Google Chrome” />
<Association Identifier=”.MP2″ ProgId=”WMP11.AssocFile.MP3″ ApplicationName=”Windows Media Player” />
<Association Identifier=”.mpeg” ProgId=”WMP11.AssocFile.mpeg” ApplicationName=”Windows Media Player” />
<Association Identifier=”.oxps” ProgId=”Windows.XPSReachViewer” ApplicationName=”XPS Viewer” />
<Association Identifier=”.tif” ProgId=”PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Tiff” ApplicationName=”Windows Photo Viewer” />
<Association Identifier=”.tiff” ProgId=”PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Tiff” ApplicationName=”Windows Photo Viewer” />
<Association Identifier=”.txt” ProgId=”txtfile” ApplicationName=”Notepad” />
<Association Identifier=”.url” ProgId=”IE.AssocFile.URL” ApplicationName=”Internet Browser” />
<Association Identifier=”.website” ProgId=”IE.AssocFile.WEBSITE” ApplicationName=”Internet Explorer” />
<Association Identifier=”.xps” ProgId=”Windows.XPSReachViewer” ApplicationName=”XPS Viewer” />
<Association Identifier=”.htm” ProgId=”ChromeHTML” ApplicationName=”Google Chrome” />
<Association Identifier=”.html” ProgId=”ChromeHTML” ApplicationName=”Google Chrome” />
<Association Identifier=”http” ProgId=”ChromeHTML” ApplicationName=”Google Chrome” />
<Association Identifier=”https” ProgId=”ChromeHTML” ApplicationName=”Google Chrome” />
</DefaultAssociations>
Forcing Mozilla Firefox
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<DefaultAssociations>
<Association Identifier=”.3gp2″ ProgId=”WMP11.AssocFile.3G2″ ApplicationName=”Windows Media Player” />
<Association Identifier=”.MP2″ ProgId=”WMP11.AssocFile.MP3″ ApplicationName=”Windows Media Player” />
<Association Identifier=”.mpeg” ProgId=”WMP11.AssocFile.mpeg” ApplicationName=”Windows Media Player” />
<Association Identifier=”.oxps” ProgId=”Windows.XPSReachViewer” ApplicationName=”XPS Viewer” />
<Association Identifier=”.tif” ProgId=”PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Tiff” ApplicationName=”Windows Photo Viewer” />
<Association Identifier=”.tiff” ProgId=”PhotoViewer.FileAssoc.Tiff” ApplicationName=”Windows Photo Viewer” />
<Association Identifier=”.txt” ProgId=”txtfile” ApplicationName=”Notepad” />
<Association Identifier=”.url” ProgId=”IE.AssocFile.URL” ApplicationName=”Internet Browser” />
<Association Identifier=”.website” ProgId=”IE.AssocFile.WEBSITE” ApplicationName=”Internet Explorer” />
<Association Identifier=”.xps” ProgId=”Windows.XPSReachViewer” ApplicationName=”XPS Viewer” />
<Association Identifier=”.htm” ProgId=”FirefoxURL” ApplicationName=”Firefox” />
<Association Identifier=”.html” ProgId=”FirefoxURL” ApplicationName=”Firefox” />
<Association Identifier=”.htm” ProgId=”FirefoxURL” ApplicationName=”Firefox” />
<Association Identifier=”.html” ProgId=”FirefoxURL” ApplicationName=”Firefox” />
<Association Identifier=”http” ProgId=”FirefoxURL” ApplicationName=”Firefox” />
<Association Identifier=”https” ProgId=”FirefoxURL” ApplicationName=”Firefox” />
</DefaultAssociations>]]>