GPMC Options

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

The options dialog box allows the user to customize how certain features work in GPMC. The options dialog box is available from the View menu in GPMC. The options menu includes tabs for Columns, Reporting, and General options which allow the user to control GPMC as described below:

  • Columns

    This tab allows you to control the columns displayed and their order for the following list views in GPMC: Group Policy Inheritance, Group Policy Objects, Linked Group Policy Objects and WMI Filters. The columns to display can be selected by checking the appropriate column names in the Columns tab of the GPMC options. The order can be set by moving column names up or down in the list.

  • Reporting

    This tab allows you to customize the location where GPMC searches for .adm files used by reporting functions in GPMC. The reporting functions in GPMC require the .adm file for the GPO to display properly. The search location option allows the user to specify a custom search folder for the .adm files, which takes precedence over the default option of first searching the Windows folder then the SYSVOL folder of the GPO. This option is discussed further in the "Reporting on GPO Settings" section earlier in this white paper.

  • General

    This tab allows you to:

    • Enable or disable trust detection. By default you can only add a forest to GPMC for which there is a 2-way trust with the forest of the user running GPMC. You can optionally enable GPMC to work with only 1-way trust. By using the Stored User Names and Passwords in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, you can also enable access to un-trusted forests, as described earlier in the “Managing Multiple Forests” section,

    • Enable or disable confirmation dialog boxes to distinguish between GPOs and GPO Links. As mentioned previously, GPMC distinguishes between GPOs and GPO-links in several ways. One method is a confirmation dialog box which appears by default when a user clicks on a GPO-link. This option controls whether that confirmation is displayed.

    • Display the domain controller name beside the domain name. By default, GPMC displays the domain controller that GPMC is using for each domain in the result pane when you go to the Domains node in the console. Using this option you can specify that GPMC should always display the domain controller in parentheses as part of the name of the domain in the console tree.