I’ve been kind of out of it the past few days, but I was successful in doing something I wanted to accomplish. I haven’t given up on trying to successfully join a Fedora box to a Windows Domain, another thing I want to accomplish, I’ve just put that off for a moment.
Windows, as you know, has it’s own disk defragmentation tool built in. I was one that never liked using the Windows defrag tool, as it never did a great job. You would run it, and after it was finished, you would run it again, and it would take sometimes just as long as the first time. No, I use PerfectDisk from Raxco Software. I actually have it installed on my server my two XP boxes, and Vista laptop. On the Raxco Software website, they had registration file that you could run on your computer that would change the default Windows defragmentation software, to PerfectDisk, so if you right clicked on your C drive, and went to Properties>Tools>Defragment Now, instead of opening the Windows defrag, it would open PerfectDisk.
Well, I wanted to learn how I could take that registration file and push it via Group Policy to my clients. There were two ways of achieving this. One was using a Startup Script, or, taking that registration file, and making a ADM file and pushing it to the clients. I chose to do a ADM file to do what I wanted.
To make the ADM file, I needed a third party tool, and downloaded a program called, NUTS (Network UTilities Set – For network administrators). Within NUTS is a tool called RegToADM, which you can create custom ADM from exported registration file.
The following instructions are what I did on my computer, and a word of caution, it’s best to test your registry changes on a test computer, any changes to your computers registry could possibly render it useless, so be careful on changes that you make.
With that said, I’m not going to go thru on how to make changes and exporting a registry file, I’m going to get to the part of making a ADM file and using that file as a group policy.
First I wanted to get my ADM file created, so I opened up RegToADM within the NUTS program:
Now you want to import the .reg file that you created, so do a File>Import REG file:
Your registry entry should now be in the REG Source column, and the it’s ADM Template output should be in the Right column:
Now we want to save the ADM Template output as a ADM Template, so do a File>Save ADM Template:
Name the ADM Template something that reflects the change that you made, and what it’s for.
Now that you have created your ADM Template, it’s time to make this a registry entry that you can push via Group Policy. Since I wanted this registry change to effect my Home Computers, I did a Create and Link a GPO Here on my Home Computers folder. When my Group Policy Object Editor window opened up, I wanted the change to reflect my Computer Configuration, so I did a Right Click on Administrative Templates folder and selected Add/Remove Templates:
The Add/Remove Templates window opens, and I selected Add so I could select the new ADM Template that I created, and clicked on Open:
After I opened the the ADM Template that I created, I highlighted the new folder that was created under Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates.
This was the area where I had some problems, because if you notice, the right hand column titled Setting, is blank:
I went ahead and pushed the newly created Group Policy, and than checked the client that I pushed to, and no changes were made, I even rebooted the machine, and logged back in, and still no changes were made.
That’s when I discovered after posting a question on a forum that I’m registered to, to make this change possible, I have to enable this policy, and since this is a unmanaged template, I have to make it possible for me to manage and to enable this new Group Policy. So to make this ADM Template possible to manage, on the tool bar of the Group Policy Object Editor select View>Filtering:
The filtering window comes up, and you’ll notice a checkmark on the bottom box that says, Only show policy settings that can be fully managed:
You want to uncheck that box, and click ok. After you have clicked ok, you will now notice that there is a setting that is possible to change, in my case it is listed as Default:
At this point, you can Right Click on the Default setting, and select Enable, which now makes the ADM Template that you created with the Registry entry that you made, possible to now push out as a Group Policy. I pushed this new policy out to a client that I wanted change, and sure enough, the registry entry was made, and when I went to Properties>Tools>Defragment Now, instead of the default Windows Defragmentation tool open, but my defragmentation tool of choice, PerfectDisk, opened.
Now I will also make known, that I did the above only on a machine that had Windows XP Professional installed, I also have a laptop, that has the same defragmentation tool mentioned above installed, but I did not push this Group Policy to it. My laptop has Windows Vista installed, and from what I have read, I would have to create a ADMX Template, instead of a ADM Template. I have also read that you can create the new ADMX Templates to Windows XP also.
I have not created a ADMX Template yet, but at the same time that there is a tool to ADM Templates, in this case RegToADM, Microsoft has a tool to create the ADMX Templates, called ADMX Migrator, which you can download by following the link below:
Download details: ADMX Migrator –Microsoft
As I have stated, I have not used this tool yet, but I’m going to test out my new fix shortly.