5.2. The Group Policy Engine

The Group Policy engine that shipped with Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Group Policy was part of the Winlogon service, and the USERENV.DLL was used to log policy events to the %WINDIR%\Debug\UserMode folder along with other logon functions.

This new version of the Group Policy engine that ships with Windows Server 2008 and Vista is built differently. Group Policy now runs as its own service; Figure 5.1 shows the Group Policy Client service running in the Services MMC. If this service is disabled, Group Policies are not applied to the system. As a unified service, the new Group Policy architecture requires fewer services to start up to support the policy engine and therefore uses less memory and system resources ...

Get Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008: Implementation and Administration now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.