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Monday, August 13, 2007

(AD) GPO's in Windows Server 2008 (Beta)

I had some time today, and went to search for group policies in Windows Server 2008.
And I must say it was a big search!

I wondered if the group management console was installed by default, so I tried to open it through typing gpmc.msc in the run command. But no luck, although I presumed it was installed by default, the command wasn’t recognized.
Opened dsa.msc (users and computers GUI) through the run command and right clicked the domain...Nothing?!...Strange...Right clicked an OU (no not an container) and still nothing?!
Damn, what am I missing? Oke... I might need to enable the advanced view to be able to see the GPO tab, but still no luck after enabling the advanced view options.

It hurts my ego, but I’ll have to use the help function to find out what has changed. Pressed F1, and typed GPO in the search field. The first link in the query seems to be the right one, and it says (I quote) "To link a new GPO, right click the domain or OU within a domain, and than click Create a GPO in this domain, and link it here. In the name box, type the name for the new GPO and than click OK."
Oké, that pretty obvious, have I missed that?! Checked again, and hell noooooo, I did not. It isn't there :(.....

Well lets try to install GPMC.MSI and see if I could find my way around than. Downloaded GPMC.msi and opened it. GPMC.msi ends with saying "set-up can not complete because Microsoft .net frameworks is not installed on your system." Aaah damn, oh well no problem, downloaded the redistributable package and opened it...
"This Package could not be installed, because its already installed on your computer"

That's it! Let’s call in the help of my good friend, Mr Google!

Well after googling around for one hour, I started to put ‘a’ and ‘b’ together which pointed me in the wright direction (might missed the obvious, sorry if I did). So for all of you who are still searching, here it goes:

Group Policy Management Console is shipped with Windows Server 2008 (Beta) but isn't installed. To enable it and install it you need to type "servermanagercmd -install gpmc" in the run command (not the command prompt). After running that command you'll find group policy management back in the administrative tools.

Shortly after opening the gpmc you'll find that GPMC can't read the default domain & domain controller policy. As you might know, new policies are XML based and have the ADMX extension instead of the ADM extension, which is probably causing GPMC to display the error. I'll look into it, but that's food for another thread later on.

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