Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 Inside Out

Managing Group Policy Inheritance and Processing

GPOs can be linked to sites, domains, and OUs in Active Directory. When you create and link a GPO to one of these containers in Active Directory, the GPO is applied to the user and computer objects in that container according to the inheritance and preference options used by Active Directory. Computer-related policies are processed during startup of the operating system. User-related policies are processed when a user logs on to a computer. Once applied, Group Policy settings are automatically refreshed at a specific interval to ensure they are current. Group Policy settings can also be refreshed manually.

Group Policy Inheritance

Active Directory uses inheritance to determine how Group Policy is ...