Transferring local computer policy

[Richard]

I am the tech for a Boys & Girls Club. We received a very
generous software donation from Microsoft. I am beginning
the process of installing Windows XP across all of our
Learning Center computers.

My question: Is there a way to automatically set the Local
Computer Policy? I currently have to enable/disable all
the settings we want to use by hand on every computer. It
is time-consuming and error-prone. I would much rather
have an automated method to ensure that the settings are
consistent across all our learning center computers.

Note: I do not have a server of any sort available. Just
workstations running XP Pro.

 

[Miha Pihler]

i Richard,

yes, it is possible to transfer settings. My recommendation is to look at

secedit /? > secedit commands

Look under:
* secedit /export
* secedit /configure

I hope this helps you out,

Mike

 

[Guest]

I had found the secedit command before. When I have read
up on what it does, it seems to only apply to the security
policy and not the group policy. I am looking to transfer
the set of policies that contains, for example, "User
cannot change wallpaper" and "Disable personalized menus".
The secedit command doesn't look like it works on those
policies. Or, am I reading it wrong?

 

[Roger Abell]

Correct, the scope of the export is limited, and, it also
seems broken recently.

What you likely need to do is to look at
1. defining a security template, using the two snapins
Security Templates, and Security Configuration and
Analysis. The templates are just files that you can then
copy to and apply on any machine (using either the second
of these two snap-ins, or with secedit)
2. editing the adm files of interest to have the settings as
desired, rather than their defaults as shipped, and then
using the import capability of the Group Policy snapin
which you will find in the context (r-click) menu of the
Administrative templates node.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

What about setting up one workstation exactly as you want it, and then using
Ghost to deploy the image to the other workstations? You can set up a
temporary ghost server....

Also - how many workstations are we talking about here? Workgroups are not
very scalable and I would suggest a server with a domain model if you have
more than a handful of workstations.

 

[Robut2]

Anyone know if there is a way to import/export not just the template,
but the actual settings so I could apply the settings to another
computer. Don't have Active Directory on our network, yet. Thanks.