New Group Policy Templates in Windows Vista

Windows Vista has adopted XML to describe registry policy settings. This is sure to make life easier for administrators who need to modify or create Group Policy templates. More info is in the article.

At a Glance:

* Inside ADMX
* Editing ADMX files
* How ADM and ADMX files differ
* Creating a Central Store

Prior to Windows Vista, the registry values you could set within Group Policy were governed by ADM files, whose syntax was cryptic and proprietary. If you wanted to control additional registry values beyond the ones Microsoft shipped with the standard ADM files, you had to learn this syntax and create a custom ADM file. In addition, these ADM files were stored with each Group Policy Object (GPO) in your Active Directory environment, and each of these GPOs with the accompanying ADM files were replicated to all domain controllers in the domain.

With the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft takes a major step in the area of Group Policy-based registry templates. Windows Vista introduces significant changes in both the format of the ADM file, now called ADMX, and the way in which these files are stored. In this article, I’ll take a look inside the new ADMX format and discuss how these files are different from ADM. I’ll also look at how storage of these files is handled in a Windows Vista environment.