…How To…

This is something that crops up quite often. For example, you may have a requirement for matching policies on every OU in your domain except for one minor change such as a different desktop background. In instances like this having to create a new group policy and recreate all the rules again is a tedious and unessary chore. Here I detail how to copy the policy the easy way.
Most people would assume that to copy a policy would be a simple matter of right clicking within the group policy editor. Unfortunately it’s not quite as simple as that in Windows 2000 (Not by default in Windows 2003 either but you can download Group Policy Management Console from Microsoft and this makes right click and copy an option.)   Otherwise follow these simple instructions and you can copy a policy with very little effort.  This is something that crops up quite often. For example, you may have a requirement for matching on every in your except for one minor change such as a different . In instances like this having to create a new and recreate all the rules again is a tedious and unessary chore. Here I detail how to the easy way.Most people would assume that to copy a policy would be a simple matter of right clicking within the group policy editor. Unfortunately it’s not quite as simple as that in Windows 2000 (Not by default in Windows 2003 either but you can download Group Policy Management Console from Microsoft and this makes right click and copy an option.)   Otherwise follow these simple instructions and you can copy a policy with very little effort. 1.) Open up group policy editor and create a new policy.
2.) Right click the policy and make a note of the unique identifier or folder name. This is quite a long number so you will need to make a note of it.
3.) Log on to a domain controller and navigate to c:\winnt\SYSVOL\Sysvol\domain name\policies.
4.) Open up the foldername of the policy you want to copy FROM, select all the files in there and select copy.
5.) Open up the folder name of the new folder and paste all the files in.