Local Policy Changes

[James Krawisz]

I have a number f XP machines with local group policies enabled. What is
the preferred method to chnge a local policy once the machines have been
distributed without going to each one. Thanks, Jim

[Darren Mar-Elia]

James-
You can use the GP Editor remotely against a local GPO but there is no
"easy" way to make mass changes to local GPOs the way you can with
domain-based GPOs. If the policy you're applying to the local GPO is just
Admin. Template policy, then you can make the change on a single machine and
copy the appropriate registry.pol file from the local file system to the
same spot on all the target machines, but there are some caveats around
that. You could also spend money and get a product like GPAnywhere from Full
Armor, which is designed to manage local GPOs the way you want.

--
Darren Mar-Elia
MS-MVP-Windows Management
http://www.gpoguy.com

"James Krawisz" <jkra...@lordbissell.com> wrote in message
news:%23CEaODP...@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...

[James Krawisz]

Thanks for the suggestions. I looked for the .pol file and it does not
exist. Since I created the local policy with the mmc snap-in. It is saved
locally as a .msc file. Seems that if I replace this file with changes, the
changes do not get read into the registry as i would have expected.

Jim

"Darren Mar-Elia" <dmano...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:eR6okIPl...@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...

[Darren Mar-Elia]

James-
The .msc file doesn't hold any policy items. That's just a template for your
MMC tool. Admin Template policy for the local GPO is held in one of the two
locations, depending upon whether its per-machine or per-user. Specifically:

%windir%\system32\grouppolicy\user\registry.pol
%windir%\system32\grouppolicy\machine\registry.pol

That's the file I was referring to that you can copy around. However, you
need to also make sure that the version number of the local GPO, held in
gpt.ini, is not 0. If it is, then the local GPO is ignored.

--
Darren Mar-Elia
MS-MVP-Windows Management
http://www.gpoguy.com

"James Krawisz" <jkra...@lordbissell.com> wrote in message

news:OYyngja...@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...

[James Krawisz]

Thanks once again, I understand much better now. I will experiment with
replacing these files.

Jim
"Darren Mar-Elia" <dmano...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

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