Custom GPO Templates 1

[klhoskins]

I was doing some research on creating custom "ADM" templates to add into Group Policy, but am finding little help online for this.

Basically, we are running Win2k AD with win2k and XP clients. I want to add the functionality into Group Policy to set the "regional settings" on our clients. Specificaly, the "time format" setting. We want to change it the setting to "military" format.

If anyone has any information that would help me to get started... I would appreciate it...

 

[markdmac]

If you take a look at the SYSTEM.ADM file you will see the general format you need for your ADM.

The hardest part for your need is identifying the registry settings that need to be changed. If you already know that, post it and I will help you out with the ADM file.

I hope you find this post helpful. Please let me know if it was.

Regards,

Mark

 

[klhoskins]

It looks like the time format key is a "current user" setting. Which gets set from the "default user". Anyway, I could write a script to do it, but I think GPO is a better way to go as we already have way too many startup scripts. The string is.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International\sTimeFormat

The value data we are trying to set it to is HH:mm:ss

Thanks in advance for any help you can give...

 

[markdmac]

Here you go. Save the bold text to an ADM file and you are good to go to add it to your poicy. To view the settings in MMC you will need to click View, Filtering and uncheck the box
Only Show Policy Settings That Can Be Fully Managed



CLASS USER
CATEGORY "Time Settings"
POLICY !!SelectMilitaryTimeFormat
KEYNAME "Control Panel\International"
VALUENAME "sTimeFormat"
VALUEON "HH:mm:ss"
VALUEOFF "h:mm:ss tt"
END POLICY
END CATEGORY


[strings]
SelectMilitaryTimeFormat = "Use Military Time Format 24:00:00"



I hope you find this post helpful. Please let me know if it was.

Regards,

Mark

 

[klhoskins]

Thanks Mark, That worked great.

I was going to put one together myself but was unsure about the [strings] section. Apparently it's just the text that gets displayed for the setting itself.

 

[BDAMartinez]

Hi Mark...
I just read your very helpful post & am hoping you can help me out as well.

I'm trying to do two things via Group Policies.

1) Modify the string value "Start Page" in the following key:
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main" and set it to a page of my choosing.

2) Add the DWORD "Completed" to the following key:
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Connection Wizard" and set its binary value to 01.

I've been experimenting with Administrative Templates, but have been coming up short. Here's what I'm using for the start page:


CLASS MACHINE
CATEGORY "IE Default Start Page"
KEYNAME "Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Start Page\"
POLICY "Intranet Home Page"
KEYNAME "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet
Explorer\Main\Start Page"
VALUENAME "

http://intranet.ABC123xyz.com"

EXPLAIN "Set default IE start page to

http://intranet.ABC123xyz.com"

END POLICY
END CATEGORY


It's not working.

And for my second task I can't figure out how to even set a DWORD value at all from an ADM template. Could someone please provide me with the proper syntax to make these work, or at least point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance.
-BDA

 

[mwiner]

BDAMartinez,

I replied in your other thread
thread779-936322

 

[markdmac]

You are making this all too hard on yourself.

First off, the Default Web page is a setting already in a GPO.

UserConfig\Windows Settings\Internet Explorer Maintenance\URLs\Important URLs

Next, if you alredy have a script that will set your value, then why not use it as a login script?

I hope you find this post helpful. Please let me know if it was.

Regards,

Mark

 

[markdmac]

Cross posted with mwiner, looks like together we addressed both of yoru settings via GPO natively.

I hope you find this post helpful. Please let me know if it was.

Regards,

Mark

 

[BDAMartinez]

Thanks for your quick reply Mark.
We do set the default homepage via GPO. And we've had the IE Connection Wizard disabled for over a year. All of this worked fine until sometime last week. All new user accounts aren't getting that portion of the policy applied to them. Now for some unknown reason, when new users launch IE, they get an error that they can't run the Wizard. When I modify their registry, and set the Wizard to Complete... IE launches fine, except now, the default homepage we push through policies isn't set... so I have to do another quick registry hack. I really don't know why all of a sudden things aren't working, and I was just hoping an ADM template would fix this.
Any ideas?
Thanks again.

 

[klhoskins]

Just out of curiosity, have you edited any GPO's with a windows XP SP2 PC? We are running a win2k AD environment with win2k (SP2, SP3, and SP4) and Windows XP base and SP1 PCs. I upgraded my PC to SP2, I then did some GPO changes which updated the global templates to the XP2 SP2 versions. After that we had quite a few weird "group Policy" issues where it seemed like some settings were being read wrong and some settings were ignored completely. I then back-reved the templates and everything has been fine since...

Just a thought.

 

[BDAMartinez]

As a matter of fact, yes! I just put XPSP2 on my PC a couple of weeks ago. Our setup is similar to yours... 2K AD, with 2K SP4 PCs. We've only got 2 machines runnning XPSP2... and both are in the IT department.

You are the man.

BTW... What did you do to back-rev the templates?

Thanks a million.

 

[klhoskins]

On a PC with Windows XP SP1, open up AD Users and Computers, open your GPO, right click administrative templates under either user or computer config and select "add remove templates. Remove the templates with the latest date stamp then add them back from the ones under c:\windows\inf... Do that for any GPO you may have accessed with the SP2 PC.

 

[BDAMartinez]

Thank you!!!

 

[nervous2]

Would anybody know how to set the Short Date Formate with a policy I tried to write my own, but it doesn't seem to work. Can anyone see what I'm doing wrong?

CLASS USER
CATEGORY "Date Settings"
POLICY !!ShortDateFormat
KEYNAME "Control Panel\International"
VALUENAME "sShortDate"
VALUEON "M/dd/yy"
VALUEOFF "dd/MM/yyyy"
END POLICY
END CATEGORY


[strings]
Date="Date"
ShortDateFormat="M/dd/yy"
DateFormatDesc="Please enter the date mask. For example MM/dd/yyyy"