Environment
Novell ZENworks 11 Configuration Management Support Pack 1 - ZCM 11 SP1 Policies
Microsoft Windows XP Professional Windows XP Professional Support Pack 3
Microsoft Windows XP Professional Windows XP Professional Support Pack 3
Situation
Group policies fail to apply on some Windows XP workstations. On other Windows XP workstations in the same environment the group policies apply as they should.
Resolution
As Administrator run the following commands from the root of the C: drive:
del /s ntuser.pol
del /s ntuser.ini
del /s registry.pol
del /s gpt.ini
zac cc
zac ref bypasscache
After the refresh is finished, reboot the device.
del /s ntuser.pol
del /s ntuser.ini
del /s registry.pol
del /s gpt.ini
zac cc
zac ref bypasscache
After the refresh is finished, reboot the device.
Cause
The Windows XP devices that were having the issue were upgraded from Windows NT and also from ZEN 7. The previous install of ZEN had been configured to cache the user configuration settings, this created the policy settings and files in the local user profiles on the device. These settings were being merged with the policies that ZCM was delivering to the device.
Additional Information
The issue was found by monitoring the C:\winnt\system32\GroupPolicy\gpt.ini. After removing this file and rebooting the device, the file would get recreated with the group policy entries from ZCM, but it would also gain more entries that it should not have had. The policy content that was causing the issues was being merged from the old policy information that was contained in the user profiles.
Information on the ZEN 7 settings that caused this can be found here:
https://www.novell.com/documentation/zenworks7/dm7admin/data/a777rvi.html#bpc43mx
See section 8. (Optional) Select the Cache User Configuration check box.
Information on the ZEN 7 settings that caused this can be found here:
https://www.novell.com/documentation/zenworks7/dm7admin/data/a777rvi.html#bpc43mx
See section 8. (Optional) Select the Cache User Configuration check box.