Friday, January 22, 2016

Managing Group Policy for Windows 10

With every new Operating System, there will be new policy definitions available. With Windows 10 however, there may be new policies coming with a new build too. For example, when looking at Administrative Templates (.admx) for Windows 10, you can download the RTM version and 1511 version as well. There is a Windows 10 ADMX spreadsheet available too.

Just download the new ADMX files, install them on a server and copy the files (including language files) to your local or central Sysvol - PolicyDefinitions location. All existing files may be overwritten, older files will still be available. For more details on central store: Have a look at this post.

Just be aware of the following issue: Namespace is already defined error when you edit a policy in Windows.

This issue occurs because the LocationProviderADM.admx file was renamed as Microsoft-Windows-Geolocation-WLPAdm.admx in Windows 10. After you copy the .admx files from Windows 10 to a central store that contains a LocationProviderADM.ADMX file that is from an earlier release of Windows, there are two .admx files that contain the same settings but have different names. Therefore, the "namespace is already defined" error is received.

The solution for this is really easy:
1. Delete (or rename!) the LocationProviderADM.admx and LocationProviderADM.adml files from the central store.
2. Rename Microsoft-Windows-Geolocation-WLPAdm.admx to LocationProviderADM.admx
3. Rename Microsoft-Windows-Geolocation-WLPAdm.adml to LocationProviderADM.adml


After implementing new policy definitions, and using above solution, everything works fine! Just remember: With every new Windows 10 build, there may be new policies as well.

Happy configuring!

3 comments:

  1. I Renamed those files instead of deleting them, in case I needed to restore them. Never know what MS is going to do.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You shouldn't have to rename the latter templates, just delete the deprecated ones.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This issue was resolved in last windows 10 updtae 1607. The LocationProviderADM.admx file was not changed.

    ReplyDelete