You're saying that you have user settings that you want to apply to users only when they logon to certain computers? Sounds difficult, eh? It's not difficult at all. It sounds like a job for loopback group policy processing!
Assume the following:
[Domain] mydomain.com.org.net.local
|
|--[OU] Special Computers
| |
| |-- [Computer] COMPUTER 1
| |
| |-- [Computer] COMPUTER 2
| ...
|
|--[OU] User Accounts
|
|--[User] Bob
|
|--[User] Alice
...
You would like to apply a user setting (such as running a logon script, or applying other types of GPO user settings) for all users who logon to computers in the "Special Computers" OU. When they logon to computers located in other OUs, though, you do not want these special settings to apply.
Create and link a GPO to the "Special Computers" OU. Specify in that GPO all the user-related settings you want to apply.
("But wait, Evan! The user's account objects aren't in the 'Special Computers' OU!" Yes. I know that. Stay w/ me here. Most AD admins I've met don't understand loopback policy processing and get scared. I've seen horrible hacks like creating secondary user accounts for users to logon with when using "special computers", etc... >shudder<)
In the GPO you created, go into the COMPUTER "Administrative Templates", "System", "Group Policy", and locate the setting "User Group Policy loopback processing mode". Enable this setting. In the "Mode" box, choose "Replace" if you want all the user's "normal" group policy settings to be ignored and only the user policy settings in this new GPO to apply. Choose "Merge" if you want the user settings in the GPO to apply after all their normal user settings have applied.
My opinion is that this is a lot cleaner than "hacks" involving "If computer == blah" in logon scripts.
My advice to you would be to do what you're doing with a Group Policy Preference (GPP)registry settings, rather than with a logon script. It will apply one time, leaving default settings in the users' registry, but the user will be able to change the settings freely in the future without having them "smashed" each time they logon.
If these are Windows Server 2008 machines, like your tag says, then there's really no excuse not to use GPP registry settings. Have a look at the articles below for some more details. This is a really nice feature of W2K8, and something you should be taking advantage of.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=42e30e3f-6f01-4610-9d6e-f6e0fb7a0790&DisplayLang=en
http://blogs.technet.com/grouppolicy/archive/2008/03/04/gp-policy-vs-preference-vs-gp-preferences.aspx
Best Answer
SECEDIT is your friend for what you're trying to do. Have a look at the help for the tool. Basically, you're going to want to build a template containing the settings you're looking for. Then, you'll apply that template to computers on which you'd like those settings changed.
Open an empty Microsoft Management Console. Add a "Security Templates" snap-in with File / Add/Remove Snap-in.
Open the "Security Templates" node and the next node underneath (normally "C:\WINDOWS\security\templates").
Right-click the "C:\WINDOWS\security\templates" node and choose "New Template". Name the new template and set the description as you desire.
Expand the new template. Set the various settings as you'd like.
The security policy you created is stored in the "C:\WINDOWS\security\templates" directory by default, named with whatever name you chose and a ".INF" extension. Copy this file to a machine where you want to apply the settings.
On the machine where the settings are to be applied, run the following command from the directory where your ".INF" security template file is located:
This will apply the security template to the local security database. You can verify the "before and after" by examining the local security policy. (Be sure and close / re-open the local security policy management tool between applications of the INF file, because, AFAIK, these tools don't dynamically refresh themselves.)