What is the Group Policy?

What is a Group Policy Group Policy for Active Directory is used to control settings on many computers using once central location for all the settings. The settings are pushed out to the many computers at some interval or an event such as rebooting a computer. The changes (in most cases) are stored applied to the many computers by changing values in the registries of the many computers. This makes it possible to temporarily change group policies settings until the next application of the Group Policy settings. How do I see what Group Policies are being applied to my computer? You can open a command prompt and use the gpresult command. It is very simple to use and takes a couple of minutes to run. To run it just type gpresult at the command prompt and wait a couple minutes. Soon you will see some very useful information including what location your user account and your computer are in the Active Directory. Where in the heck is the Group Policy Editor? Well, it is hidden from you, just like the Registry Editor (regedit.exe) since it can mess up your computer if you don't know what you are doing. To open the Group Policy Editor all you have to do is go to the Start menu | Run... and then type gpedit.msc and click the OK button. You can also use the Group Policy Snap-in for the Management Console. Check out this article on how to do so. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307882. Are there any other tools I should know about? I think a freely available snap-in for the Management Console from Microsoft called Group Policy Management Console with Service Pack 1. It can be downloaded from here. You add it very much the same as you do the Group Policy Snap-in described above. When you add it, look for Group Policy Management. How do I force my computer to get the latest Group Policy? Open a command prompt and type GPUPDATE /force