Managing The Windows 2000 Registry

Managing Policies with POLEDIT

For the most part, creating policies with POLEDIT is simple and straightforward. Even though what you’re really doing is editing the Registry on one or many machines, the interface lends itself to quickly making needed changes and saving them for later application.

The sequence of operation to apply policies is simple; there are only six steps:

1. Select whatever policy templates to use before creating any policies, then make them available to the editor by attaching them (more on that shortly).

2. Decide which users, groups, and computers you want to enforce policies on.

3. Create a “relaxed” policy for your administrative-level users that incorporates only those items from Step 3 you want to enforce on your admins.

4. Create a new policy file to contain your policies, then create enough user, group, and computer policies to satisfy your list from Step 2. Alternatively, you may open the Registry of a single machine (including the local machine) to make changes to that machine only.

5. Edit each individual policy to reflect the settings you want the policies to enforce.

6. Save the policy file in the appropriate location so that policy downloaders can find it.

Attaching Policy Templates

POLEDIT supports attaching an arbitrary number of policy templates. Templates you attach add their policies to the policy properties dialog; once you attach a template, its policies are available whenever you create new policies. This argues in favor of attaching policy templates to