User Group Policy settings don't apply to Administrators?

[Guest]

I've been playing around with Group Policy on my standalone Windows XP
SP2 machine tonight, and found something peculiar.

I made some changes under User Configuration:
- I added a logon script and a logoff script
- I changed the Browser Title (this makes it so that the IE title bar
will display "Microsoft Internet Explorer provided by YOUR TEXT)
- I set the "Remove My Documents icon from Start Menu" Administrative
Template to Enabled

Then I logged in as a normal user, and I confirmed that the logon
script had been executed, the IE title bar showed the "provided by"
text, and My Documents was not in the Start Menu.

But when I logged back in as my user (who is in the Administrators
group), the logon script did not execute, the IE title bar did not
show the "provided by" text, and the My Documents was still in the
Start Menu.

What's going on here? Does everything under User Configuration in the
Group Policy only apply for non-Administrators?

 

[Guest]

I just tried the Browser Title and Admin Template changes under
Windows 2000, and they were applied to Administrator, so something
isn't right with Windows XP.

 

[Guest]

OK, this has gotten confusing. The XP machine (let's call it
OldLaptop) is a laptop that I had used at a previous company, where we
logged in thru a domain. The machine still lets me log in using the
domain account, even though it's not on a domain anymore. I just
found out that the User Configuration settings don't apply for that
domain administrative user, but they do apply for a local
administrative user.

But earlier today I tested this on my other XP laptop at work (let's
call it NewLaptop). I discovered that the User Configuration settings
*do* apply for an domain administrative user who is logged in to a
domain. But based on my testing with OldLaptop, they don't apply for
a domain administrative user who is not logged in to a domain.

Now I've just done some more testing with NewLaptop. I logged in as a
domain administrative user (locally, not thru a domain), enabled some
User Configuration settings, and they did not apply, as I expected.
Then I connected to my company's VPN (which I guess logs me in to the
domain), and the User Configuration settings got applied about 5
seconds after the VPN was connected. That coincides with my findings
from earlier today. So then I disconnected the VPN, and the User
Configuration settings remained applied, which is not consistent with
my findings from testing OldLaptop. I even logged out of Windows and
relogged in as the domain administrative user (locally, not thru the
domain), and the User Configuration settings were still applied.

So it's not just whether a domain administrative user is logged in
locally or on a domain that affects whether the local User
Configuration settings are applied to him or not. It looks like the
previous state of the User Configuration settings (if they were
previously enabled or disabled or not configured) before they were
changed also has something to do with it.