After importing Default Domain Controller Policy, MMC.exe is consuming a large amount of RAM and CPU (NETIQKB55248)

fact
NetIQ Group Policy Administrator 5.0

symptom
After importing Default Domain Controller Policy, MMC.exe is consuming a large amount of RAM and CPU resources..

symptom
Memory leak when attempting to check out or check in the Default Domain Controller Policy.

cause
During a GPG installation, the prereq checker creates a backup of the policy in the policy root folder under Sysvol prior to setting the Domain Controller Auditing Policy. This creates a problem with GPA because GPA has a process where it tries to find the gpt.ini file by iterating through a list of files, and it is does not move to the next recordset when the current file is not a gpt.ini file. Since this is contained in a while loop that exits when the end of recordset is reached, if the first recordset returned is not the gpt.ini file the result is an infinite loop.

fix

Follow these steps to resolve the issue:

1. Kill the MMC.exe process with task manager if it is hung.
2. Re-launch the GPA console.
3. Delete the Default Domain Controller Policy from the Repository.
4. Open Windows Explorer on a Domain Controller logged on as a domain admin.
5. Browse to the Sysvol directory and click on the subdirectory with the GUID corresponding to the Default Domain Controllers Policy.
• If you are unsure how to identify the policy by its GUID see the following Microsoft KB Article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216359
6. Locate the file named gpt.ini.gpg.bak and delete it.
7. Re-import the Default Domain Controllers Policy.

You should now be able to perform actions against the Default Domain Controllers Policy without any problems.

Formerly known as NETIQKB55248