How to enable Group Policy Preferences Logging via the Local Group Policy Editor

Posted onAuthorAlex Verboon1 Comment

When opening the local Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) you will notice that on a default Windows 7 SP1 Enterprise client there is no logging and tracing node for Group Policy Preferences logging underneath the Group Policy node.

gp_no_pref

The reason for this is because Group Policy Preferences can only be managed within domain based Group Policy objects and therefore a Windows 7 SP1 client does not have the Group Policy Preferences related administrative template GroupPolicyPreferences.admx installed that also includes the logging settings.

So how to enable Group Policy Preferences logging using the Local Group Policy editor? The solution is simple. Assuming that you have already a central store available, just copy the GroupPolicyPreferences.admx and GroupPolicyPreferences.adml from the Policydefinitions folder located on a domain controller \\<server>\sysvol\<domain>\Policies\PolicyDefinitions and copy them into the local PolicyDefinitions folder on the client C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions

Then reopen the Local Group Policy Editor and you will now see the logging and tracing node where you can now enable logging for Group Policy Preferences

gp_with_pref

Once enabled, you’ll find the logs under C:\ProgramData\GroupPolicy\Preference\Trace.
That’s it

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  3. How to convert registry files (.reg) into XML for Group Policy Preferences import
  4. Windows 8 – New GPO stuff
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One Reply to “How to enable Group Policy Preferences Logging via the Local Group Policy Editor”

  1. The GroupPolicyPreferences.adml file is needed as mentioned as well s the .admx file, but it is located in a Subdirectory off the root of the Domain policy folder named \en-us this also needs to be copied to the similar subdirectory on the local machine. This is not obvious to all people.

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