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        Comparing Two Group Policy Objects

Section(s): TroubleShooting, Admin , Security
Published on Jun 16, 2005.
Last Modified on Jun 16, 2005.
Last Modified by Mitch Tulloch.
Rated 3.2 out of 5 based on 10 votes.

How to compare two GPOs and see how their settings differ.

There’s no built-in functionality in Windows for comparing two GPOs to see how their settings differ, but you can try this: open the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) and select a GPO under the Group Policy Objects node. Then select the Settings tab in the right-hand pane to generate an XML report of the policy settings configured in the GPO and right-click on the report to save it as an XML file on in My Documents. Then do the same with the second GPO. Now you need to compare the two XML files. An easy way to do this is to go to http://apps.gotdotnet.com/xmltools/xmldiff/ and browse to select each file, then click Compare and scan the results to see the differences between the files. After doing this a few times it’s pretty easy to pick out the differences in policy settings between your GPOs.

About Mitch Tulloch

Mitch Tulloch was lead author for the Windows Vista Resource Kit from Microsoft Press, which is the book for IT pros who want to deploy, maintain and support Windows Vista in mid- and large-sized network environments. Mitch was also the author of Introducing Windows Server 2008 and technical project lead for the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Resource Kit, both books also from Microsoft Press. For more information on these and other books by Mitch, see www.mtit.com .