Managing Group Policy

Managing Group Policy for the Windows 7 platform involves various tasks, including the following:

• Configuring the central store
• Adding ADMX templates to the store
• Creating and managing GPOs
• Editing GPOs
• Managing MLGPOs
• Migrating ADM templates to ADMX format
• Configuring Group Policy processing
• Using Advanced Group Policy Management

The following sections explain how to perform these tasks and more.

Configuring the Central Store

You should create and configure the central store manually for ADMX template files in AD DS domains running Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2003. To create and configure the central store, follow these steps:

1. Log on to the domain controller hosting the PDC Emulator flexible single master operations (FSMO) role using a user account that is a member of the Domain Admins built-in group.
2. Open Windows Explorer and select the following folder from the left folder tree:
   %SystemRoot%\sysvol\domain\policies.
3. Create a subfolder named PolicyDefinitions within this folder.
4. Select the newly created PolicyDefinitions folder from the left folder tree and create a subfolder for each language that your Group Policy administrators will use. You must name these subfolders using the appropriate ISO language identifiers. For example, U.S. administrators should create a subfolder named EN-US under the PolicyDefinitions folde.

Note For a list of ISO language identifiers, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd318691.aspx.

After you create this folder structure for the central store on the PDC Emulator, the FRS will replicate this structure to all domain controllers in the domain. You choose the PDC Emulator as the domain controller on which to create this folder structure manually because the PDC Emulator is the default choice for the focus of the GPMC.

Note Creating a central store is not a requirement for using Group Policy to manage computers running Windows Vista or later. For example, in the absence of a central store, an administrator can use the GPMC on an RSAT administrative workstation running Windows 7 to create GPOs and then use the GPMC to configure these GPOs. The advantage of configuring a central store is that all GPOs created and edited after the store is configured have access to all of the ADMX files within the store, which makes the central store useful for deploying any custom ADMX files that you want to share with other administrators in your domain.