Best Practices and Troubleshooting

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You can use Group Policy, to specify your organization's specific requirements for managed desktop configurations for groups of computers and users. Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server includes hundreds of Group Policy settings that you can configure. Because Group Policy is flexible and includes options for registry-based policy settings, security settings, software installation, scripts, computer startup and shutdown, user logon and logoff, and folder redirection, the Resource Kit provides tools for troubleshooting potential problems.

For detailed information about the tools that you use to troubleshoot software installation and maintenance, see "Troubleshooting Change and Configuration Management" in this book.

Assigning the same software to both users and computers

Although some scenarios lend themselves to assigning the software to the computer, and others to assigning it to users, avoid assigning the same software to both users and computers. This applies to assigning the software within one Group Policy object or assigning the software to users in one Group Policy object and to computers in another Group Policy object if both Group Policy objects can be applied to a single user when Group Policy is applied.

When an application does not immediately show up in Add/Remove Programs

When a new Group Policy object is created and edited, users will not see any new application assigned by this Group Policy object in Add/Remove Programs until the next time they restart their computers.

When you add a new Group Policy object with a new managed application the Software Installation Group Policy setting is applied when the user logs on. If the user clicks Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel and they do not see the new application (from the new Group Policy object), the user must log off and then log back on. Add/Remove Programs does not reflect the new Group Policy object until the Software Installation Group Policy setting is applied again.

You cannot use the Group Policy refresh command, secedit/RefreshPolicy, to apply an updated Software Installation Group Policy setting. Secedit is ignored and has no effect on Software Installation. Software Installation also ignores the period refresh of Group Policy (default 90 minutes with a 30 minute offset).