Cry How To...
Administer system policy from a workstation
Normally the system policy can only be edited from a Windows NT Server.
One reason for this is that the executable ‘poledit.exe
’ (System
Policy Editor) is not available on NT Workstation.
Requirements:
In order to run the system policy editor on a workstation requires domain-admin rights and network access to the server.
To set-up:
-
Log onto the workstation as a member of domain-admins.
- Mount the drive ‘
\\<server>\c$
’
- do not select to reconnect at logon.
- this step will make the following stages easier, but is not mandatory.
-
Copy from ‘
\\<server>\c$\winnt\inf
’ the files ‘common.adm
’ and ‘winnt.adm
’ to the local ‘c:\winnt\inf
’ directory. -
To run system administrator, run ‘
\\<server>\c$\winnt\profiles\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools (Common)\System Policy Editor
’.
It may be easier to copy the executable ‘
\\<server>\c$\winnt\poledit.exe
’ into the local ‘c:\winnt
’ directory and add a shortcut to it (called ‘System Policy Editor’) to the local Administrative Tools.
- The current system policy for the domain is the file ‘
\\<server>\c$\winnt\system32\repl\import\scripts\NTConfig.pol
’. This can now be loaded and edited as normal.
These notes have been tested with Windows NT4.
About the author: Brian Cryer is a dedicated software developer and webmaster. For his day job he develops websites and desktop applications as well as providing IT services. He moonlights as a technical author and consultant.