Group Policy when power down Win XP client

[Guest]

I'm preparing for the 70-270 exam & want to make sure I'm not confused on a
very basic point. What happens to Group Policy on a Win XP Pro domain client
when you power down, and then restart and log on while not connected to the
network, and using a cached User Profile? LGPO is present, of course. But
from what I've read, it appears that the SDOU portion of Group Policy (both
Computer and User settings) have not been saved. Thus the workstation is
functioning on LGPO alone. On the other hand, if the client is just
unplugged from the network, but not powered down and the user not logged off,
then I suppose SDOU would still be in operation. Is all of that correct? If
so, then it appears that one should pay serious attention to having a good
LGPO when deploying Win XP, even in a domain setting. I'd appreciate some
help on this.

 

[Florian Frommherz]

Howdy Frank!

I'm preparing for the 70-270 exam & want to make sure I'm not confused on a
very basic point. What happens to Group Policy on a Win XP Pro domain client
when you power down, and then restart and log on while not connected to the
network, and using a cached User Profile? LGPO is present, of course. But
from what I've read, it appears that the SDOU portion of Group Policy (both
Computer and User settings) have not been saved. Thus the workstation is
functioning on LGPO alone. On the other hand, if the client is just
unplugged from the network, but not powered down and the user not logged off,
then I suppose SDOU would still be in operation. Is all of that correct? If
so, then it appears that one should pay serious attention to having a good
LGPO when deploying Win XP, even in a domain setting. I'd appreciate some
help on this.

All domain Group Policy settings will be saved locally after having them
applied successfully once. So if you go and log on to your domain, let
the computer pull all Group Policy, shut it down and restart it without
having connectivity to the network (or the domain controllers), the
policies will take effect as they are cached locally.

cheers,

Florian

 

[Frank]

Thanks for your reply, Florian. Your explanation sounds more reasonable
than what I had gleaned from a couple of sources.

Now I wonder if someone could tell me where the Computer and User SDOU
settings of Group Policy are cached on the Win XP Pro client? I'm aware of
the Ntuser.pol files in %AllUsersProfile% and in %UserProfile%, but am not
clear about their purpose. I'm aware that they contain Computer and User
"history", respectively, but "history" sounds like something different than
"cache".

Thanks,

Frank