How can I
add a new Administrative Template to an
existing (or new) GPO?
In a previous article -
Understanding Administrative Templates
in GPO - I've described the purpose of
the Administrative Templates section in
the Windows 2000/XP/2003 GPO.
Administrative Templates are a large
repository of registry-based changes
that can be found in any GPO on Windows
2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server
2003. The Administrative Templates are
Unicode-formatted text files with the
extension .ADM and are used to create
the Administrative Templates portion of
the user interface for the GPO Editor.
Although Administrative
Templates have virtually hundreds of
options within them, there may be times
when an administrator will need to add
more options to a new or existing GPO.
One method for an
administrator to add such extensions to
the GPO is by adding new settings to the
Administrative Templates sections. This
can be done by adding .ADM files to the
existing Administrative Templates
section in GPO.
Adding
.ADM files to the Administrative
Templates in a GPO
In order to add
additional .ADM files to the existing
Administrative Templates section in GPO
please follow the next steps:
-
Open the Group Policy
Management Console (or GPMC) from
the Administrative Tools folder in
the Stat menu, or by typing
gpmc.msc in the Run command.
Note: GPMC is
not a built-in part of Windows
2000/XP/2003, and needs to be
separately installed. You can
download GPMC from the following
link (Download GPMC), yet remember
it can only be used effectively on
Windows Server 2003-based Active
Directory.
If you do not have
GPMC or cannot install it then
you'll need to edit the GPO via the
regular means, i.e. from Active
Directory Users and Computers
management tool (dsa.msc).
-
Right-click an
existing GPO (or create an new GPO,
then right-click on it) and select
Edit.
-
Expand either the
Computer settings or Users settings
sections of the GPO. Go to the
appropriate Administrative Templates
section and right-click it. Select
Add/Remove Templates.
-
In the Add/Remove
Templates window click Add.
-
Browse to the
location of the required .ADM file
and click Open.
-
In the Add/Remove
Templates window notice that the new
.ADM file is listed, then click
Close.
Now re-open the
Administrative Templates section and
browse to the new settings location.
Disabling
GPO settings filtering
Many custom
Administrative Templates require you to
remove the requirement to show policy
settings that can be fully managed in
the GPO editor. To do so follow the next
steps:
-
After completing the
above procedure, browse to the newly
added Administrative Template
section.
Note that the section
is indeed listed, however in the
right-pane is empty.
-
Right-click an empty
spot in the right pane and select
View > Filtering.
-
In the Filtering
window click to un-mark the "Only
show policy settings that can be
fully managed" option. Then
click Ok.
-
Notice how the
available options are now displayed
in the right pane.
You can now configure
these options as you please. |