Introduction to Configuration and Management

Although System Policy Editor (Poledit.exe) is largely replaced by Group Policy, it is still useful in some circumstances, such as the following:

For Managing Computers That Are Running Windows 95 or Windows 98    You must run the Windows 2000 version of System Policy Editor locally on computers running Windows 98 or Windows 95 to create Config.pol files that are compatible with the local operating system.

For Managing Computers That Are Running Windows NT 4.0 Workstation or Windows NT 4.0 Server    These computers also need their own version of the .pol file (Ntconfig.pol).

For Managing Windows 2000–based Computers That Are Not Connected to a Windows 2000 Server Network    A Windows 2000–based computer that is not joined to any domain is not subject to Group Policy settings by way of Active Directory. The only Group Policy settings that apply to such a computer are those associated with local Group Policy, which contains settings that are applied to that computer and all of its users.

It is possible to provide settings for multiple users by using System Policy Editor to create an Ntconfig.pol file. For information about distributing the Ntconfig.pol file, see the Implementing Profiles and Policies for Windows NT 4.0 link on the Web Resources page at https://windows.microsoft.com/windows2000/reskit/webresources .

You should use only the Group Policy settings that are intended for use with Windows 2000 Professional (System.adm, Inetres.adm, and Conf.adm), which install by default with the Group Policy snap-in. To prepare these files for use with System Policy Editor, remove the #if ver constructs from the files. Otherwise, the policy settings will not display in the file.

Note

You can use Windows 2000 .adm files only in the System Policy Editor (Poledit.exe) that is included with Windows 2000.

Although earlier versions of System Policy Editor work only with ASCII-encoded .adm files, Group Policy in Windows 2000 also supports Unicode-encoded .adm files.