Windows – No “Terminal Services” branch in “Group Policy Object Editor”

group-policyterminalwindows

We have several identical several servers in a hosting company.
They run Windows 2003 R2 Std SP2 64bit. The servers are not in a domain.
We have recently received a new server with the same configuration and hardware.
However, the new server is different in some way. When we run "gpedit.msc /s" there are much less options in the tree than the other servers. Specifically we are missing the configuration of "Terminal Services".
Many other items are missing under "Administrative templates" and "Windows components".

Screenshot of correct server: (can't post link due to SF policy)

Screenshot of new server: http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/572/gpowindowscomponentstp5.png

What should we try?

Thanks,
Arik.

Best Answer

The IT technician solved the issue by renaming C:\WINDOWS\system32\GroupPolicy\Adm to something else which caused the folder to be re-created with correct content (run gpedit). The old files seem to be different that the files that cause the branches to appear.

Hope it helps somebody.

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It's possible, yes.

Not really advisable, because the supported and recommended way to do this is through the gpedit.msc tool (or GPOs on a domain). As a result, doing it with a script is semi-documented at best, and you do run into some oddities trying.

If you're still determined to try, theses settings are really just registry keys. If can figure out which keys are changed, it's trivial to script something up to import all those registry keys and end up with the desired configuration. I'd just use a batch file, honestly.

The problem you'll run into, however, is that these changes need to be saved to %SYSTEM ROOT%\System32\GroupPolicy\User\Registry.pol to be enforced as local group policy, and I don't know of a good scripted solution to that, so the common workaround is to set this up the way you want on a second machine, and copy the %SYSTEM ROOT%\System32\GroupPolicy\User folder and files to your target machines.

I personally find the whole thing to be such a pain that I'd rather set up a small domain than go through that process to apply automate applying local group policy.

Best Answer

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