Troubleshooting Group Policy

In Windows Server 2003 and earlier, you could enable userenv logging to help troubleshoot Group Policy problems. With Windows Vista and later however, userenv logging has been removed. Instead, you can use Event Viewer to troubleshoot Group Policy issues by examining the following two event channels, which are both enabled by default.

Administrative events with Group Policy as their event source are logged in the System log (as on previous platforms).

Detailed events (which used to be found in the userenv.log) are now found in the Group Policy Operational Log, and these detailed events are now logged by default and don’t need to be enabled the way userenv logging had to be.

***

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. For more information see www.mtit.com.