Group Policy, Profiles, and IntelliMirror for Windows2003, WindowsXP, and Windows 2000 (Mark Minasi Windows Administrator Library)

Overview

In the last chapter, you got to know how and when Group Policy works. We used Active Directory Users And Computers to create and manage users and computers, but we used the GPMC to manage Group Policy. We got a little workout with the GPMC when creating new GPOs and linking them to various levels in Active Directory.

And, for just a moment, we went back to the old-school way to delegate control to Frank and the HR-OU-Admins group to link existing GPOs to their Human Resources OU structure.

In this chapter, I'll cover the remainder of daily tasks you can perform using the GPMC. As a reminder, the GPMC is for all implementations of Active Directory. That is, you can use the GPMC to manage Windows 2000 and/or Windows 2003 domains. You just need the GPMC loaded on a Windows XP machine (with at least SP1) or a Windows 2003 computer.

I'll tackle most of the remaining features the GPMC has to offer in this chapter, but loading the GPMC brings two other goodies to the table. We'll tackle those goodies in Chapter 7, "Scripting GPMC Operations," and for additional information, see the Appendix.

So, with that in mind, let's get to know the GPMC a bit better.