Firewall settings & group policy not working

[MS]

We have 2 policies in use for machines, 1 for laptops (=firewall is
enabled), 1 for workstations (=firewall is disabled).

I've got several laptops that aren't using the settings defined with GP. The
clients are running XP + SP2 with all the hotfixes, and the servers are
running 2003 + SP1 (+ all the hotfixes).

About 80% of the laptops work fine (=get the correct settings from the
server, =enabled), but the rest don't seem to care about GP at all.

Using "gpresult" from command line on client I can see that the correct
policy is listed on Computer Settings / "Applied Group Policy Objects", but
still firewall says "using your non-domain settings" and I have to manually
configure it.

Running "gpupdate" doesn't help.

All laptops are members in the same OU in AD.

Any ideas?

 

[Steven L Umbach]

Try running rsop.msc on one of the problem computers to see if it shows that
it is using the settings you expect or not. Also check the application logs
on those computers to see if any problems are shown such as userenv that
could indicate a Group Policy problem and run the support tool netdiag to
see if any problems are found such as dc discovery, DNS, domain membership,
or trust/secure channel. I would also make sure that there are no ISP DNS
servers listed as DNS servers in tcp/ip properties of the problem
mputers. --- Steve