Microsoft Windows Registry Guide, Second Edition

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 have to buy a book to learn more. 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 it's 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. It's the paper I used most when writing this chapter because it describes the syntax for each of the keywords that you can use in administrative templates.

• http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/mngwinxp.mspx

  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 that 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. Notice that this Web page includes a URL to a spreadsheet that lists all the policies. You can use it as a starting point for your own specification, recording which policies you're going to deploy.