Considerations When Working with ADMX Template Files

The following considerations apply when working with ADMX template files:

• Windows 7 includes only ADMX template files and does not include any of the default ADM template files used in versions of Windows earlier than Windows Vista. The default ADMX template files in Windows 7 supersede the default ADM template files used in earlier platforms.
• If you add the default ADM files to a GPO, the version of Group Policy Management Editor in Windows 7 will not read them. For example, if you have customized the System.adm file from a previous version of Windows and this ADM file is in the GPO, you will not see your customized settings when you open this GPO in the Group Policy Management Editor of a computer running Windows 7.
• If ADMX template files exist on both the local computer running Windows 7 and in a central store on domain controllers, the ADMX template files in the central store are used for surfacing policy settings when the Group Policy Management Editor is used on domain computers.
• Policy settings in ADMX template files containing Supported On text that reads "At least Windows 7" are available only to computers running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. These settings are not available to computers running earlier versions of Windows and have no effect on the registry of these computers when they are targeted by the GPO. In addition, domain-based policy settings that exist only in ADMX template files can be managed only from computers running Windows 7 with RSAT or Windows Server 2008 R2 because the policy settings are not exposed in the versions of Group Policy Management Editor available on earlier versions of Windows.
• You can import an ADM template file into the %WinDir%\inf folder on a computer running Windows 7 in the usual way by right-clicking the appropriate (computer or user) Administrative Templates node in the Group Policy Management Editor and selecting Add/Remove Templates. Windows 7 has no interface for importing ADMX template files into %SystemRoot%\PolicyDefinitions, however.
• Administrators who develop custom ADM template files can migrate these files to the new ADMX format by using ADMX Migrator. For more information, see the section titled "Migrating ADM Templates to ADMX Format" later in this tutorial.
• The Group Policy Management Editor included with Windows 7 can read and display both ADMX template files and custom-developed ADM files but not the default ADM template files used with earlier versions of Windows. (Note that this does not cause any issues because the ADMX files of Windows 7 and Windows Vista contain a superset of the policy settings found in the ADM files of earlier versions of Windows.) If a computer running Windows 7 includes a custom (non-default) ADM template file stored in the %WinDir%\inf folder on the local computer, the policy settings defined in this file will be displayed in a separate node called Classic Administrative Templates (ADM) found under Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates or User Configuration \Administrative Templates depending on the location to which the ADM template file was imported. If ADM template files are stored in a GPO in SYSVOL, the same behavior occurs when you use the Group Policy Management Editor on a computer running Windows 7 to open the GPO.
• If you use the GPMC to create a new GPO from a Windows 7 or Windows Vista SP1 computer running RSAT and this GPO is never edited using the Group Policy Management Editor in an earlier version of Windows, the GPO folder will not contain either ADM or ADMX template files. This approach helps reduce the size of each GPO folder by about 4 MB over previous platforms and thus helps reduce SYSVOL bloat on your domain controllers. However, if you create a new GPO from a computer running Windows 7 or Windows Vista SP1 by using the GPMC and then edit the GPO using the Group Policy Management Editor from an earlier version of Windows, the ADM template files found in %WinDir%\inf on the earlier version of Windows are automatically copied to the GPO folder and replicated to all domain controllers in the domain.

Important It is a best practice that after you edit GPOs using the GPMC included in Windows Server 2008 R2 or the GPMC included with RSAT for Windows 7, you do not use earlier versions of either the GPMC or the Group Policy Management Editor to edit those GPOs.

Warning Just as with earlier versions of Windows, Microsoft does not recommend that you customize the default ADMX files used in Windows 7. If you customize the default ADMX or ADM files, your customization settings may be lost when Microsoft releases updated versions of these files.