Are Group Policy Settings Retained When Offline?

[bhaf]

I have a small Active Directory-based network with a single Windows 2000 domain controller and 20 or so workstations (soon to all be on Windows XP SP2). I use group policy to apply certain - mostly security-related - settings to all workstations. For the first time, we will have a few notebook computers in the mix. These will be connected to the domain periodically, but will often be used stand-alone in the field, without any connection to our domain.

As I understand it, users can still log on using their domain user name/password when not connected by using cached credentials so that their settings, My Documents, Favorites, etc. are the same as when they are connected to the domain. But what happens to group policy settings?

Are group policy settings that were applied to a computer when connected to the domain retained when the computer is offline from the domain? Or does the computer revert to using purely local settings?

If they are retained, do these remain indefinitely or do they "expire" after a certain amount of time/logons?

bhaf

[chrisp]

Best I can tell, as long as the GPO has already been applied, the settings should be retained and not revert.

[bhaf]

Thanks, chrisp. I posted this on Experts Exchange too, and someone there actually tried a little test with a notebook. From the test, it appears that you are correct. Policies stay in effect when the computer is offline (but they obviously won't be updated).

Thanks for the feedback.

bhaf