Copy Group Policy ADM files from 1 GPO to another?

[mrsh]

Hi all

We have many Group Policy Objects (GPOs) within our Active Directory infrastructure. For testing purposes, we copy existing GPOs, link them to different O.U.s and change the Admin Templates (ADM files).

We have a GPO that includes the inetres.adm for IE8, we have fully configured it to our needs (disabled InPrivate Browsing etc...). However, when we copy the GPO and remove all other ADM files except inetres.adm, we still see all of the the settings from the previously attached ADM files. Also, if we create a new GPO from scratch, remove all default ADM files and then add our customised inetres.adm file, there are no settings defined at all!

We have tried this on an XP SP2 machine with IE, an XP SP3 machine with IE8 and a Windows 2003 server with IE7.

How can we copy our customised ADM files from one GPO to another please?

Thanks
Scott

[jeremym]

Have you right-clicked over the GPO within the "Group Policy Objects" node within the GPMC? Then selected "Copy" then "Paste" ? upon the Group Policy Objects' node again?

[mrsh]

Yes, we copied and pasted the GPOs fine but when we remove all other ADM files except inetres.adm, we still see all of the the settings from the previously attached ADM files. We think it's because there are stored in the GPT (?) or registy.pol file but don't know how to only have the settings for IE8 configured. We don't want to have to start again with a blank ADM file & configured all the settings from scratch. We have to do the same with Office 2007 settings.

Where are we going wrong please?

[scottzaiss]

The ADM files only store what settings can be set in that GPO, it doesn't store any of the actual settings. As far as I have ever been able to find, the only way to remove existing settings is to manually set them to 'Not Configured' while the old ADMs are linked to the GPO. You can make it a LITTLE easier by setting a filter to only show configured settings, but that's about it. It's really a matter of whether it's easier to manually remove the settings you don't want, or to create a new GPO and set the settings you do want.

Sorry but I really don't think there is an easy way to do this one.

Scott