Finding More Resources

This chapter focused on local registry-based policies. This is a registry book after all. If you're interested in learning more about Group Policy, Microsoft's Web site contains a plethora of good information. You don't even need to buy a book to learn more about it. Here's a list of resources that I found valuable when I was first learning about Group Policy:

• http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/howitworks/management/grouppolwp.asp This is the Windows 2000 Group Policy white paper, and it's the best starting point for understanding how to create GPOs and apply them to containers in Active Directory. This paper is long but a worthy read.

• http://www.microsoft.com/Windows2000/techinfo/howitworks/management/rbppaper.asp This is the Implementing Registry-Based Group Policy white paper. The bulk of this paper is about creating administrative templates for Windows XP. It's the paper I used most when writing this chapter because it describes the syntaxes for each of the keywords you can use in administrative templates.

• http://www.microsoft.com/WINDOWSXP/pro/techinfo/administration/policy/default.asp This is the Managing Windows XP in a Windows 2000 Server Environment white paper. It's a bit long, and all it really says is that Windows 2000 ignores Windows XP policies, and you can copy the Windows XP administrative templates to %SYSTEMROOT%\Inf on a Windows 2000-based server to use those templates for both Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Still, it's an interesting read because it goes into detail about the Group Policy improvements that Windows XP provides. Of note, this Web page includes a spreadsheet that lists all the policies. You can use it as a start for your own specification, recording which policies you're going to deploy.