Policy Editor: File can not be accessed by the system

[Brian]

It starts out pretty normal, I can run group policy
management from XP as domain admin, or from the PDC itself
(windows 2000 sp3) and start editing policy settings, I
can usually set atleast 1 setting, however usually on the
2nd setting I edit, upon return I get "The Group Policy
snapin was unable to save your changes due to the
following error: The file can not be accessed by the
system."

Now the ADM file is on the PDC (but I've tried it on the
XP machine as well). I've tried both a shared path and
the default directory for ADM (/winnt/inf) but still I get
the same problem.

The error seems simple enough, the ADM file is
inaccessible (because I can change anything in the Windows
Settings/Software to my hearts content without any
error). However it's clearly accessible!

Some details,

PDC
Windows 2000 SP3
FAT32 Partitions (thinking this has something to do with
it)

Policy ADM file:
system.adm (windows xp sp2)

let me know anything else I can offer that would be of
assistance, thanks alot for any help.

 

[Brian]

Does nobody want to touch this one? Please any input is
appreciated!

 

[Tim Springston [MS]]

Hi Brian-

I suspect you may need to look at the network configuration on the PDC
Emulator, and/or network captures of the problem as it occurs.

If the PDC E is multihomed my first thought would be to take a look at the
binding order, and look for other possible clients.

For the network capture I would be looking at the time index of the "can not
be accessed byt the system" recurrence. It could be a lack of reply from
the domain controller, or a slight drop of traffic or something on the
server side itself such as performance, configuration (mentioned above) or
something less expected.

Please repost on what you find.

 

[Brian]

I'm a little late getting back to this post, sorry for the
delay.

Actually I don't believe it's a networking problem,
because the same problem will occur when using policy
editor on the PDC itself. There are a few quirks about
this system however, the SYSVOL is located on
D:\winnt\sysvol when the system is actually on C:

The reason for this I think is because the C: is still in
FAT16

There's another thing I've noticed, after this error
certain settings in the policy will be lost, while others
will still remain. Settings in the Computer
Configuration/ADM/network settings get lost (such as WinXP
SP2 firewall settings) however in User/adm/control
panel/display settings will remain.

I hope I'm providing enough information, please let me
know if more would be required.