Replmon Utility to View Group Policy Objects List

Replmon is a GUI tool that enables administrators to view the low-level status of Active Directory replication, force synchronization between domain controllers, view the topology in a graphical format, and monitor the status and performance of domain controller replication. It is included with the Windows Server 2003 Support Tools.

Support Tools are included on the Windows Server 2003 media. Go to the Support\Tools folder and click on the setup.exe or the msi file to start the installation.b

Replmon is a great utility for troubleshooting replication but did you know that you can enumerate your group policy object status and find out what GUID goes to which group policy object. When you see those events that are pointing to the GPO for CN={31B2F340-016D-11D2-945F-00C04FB984F9}and you have no clue to which GPO it is referring, you can load up replmon and enumerate your GPOs and find out.

After installing the Support Tools, from the run line type "replmon" to start the utility.

Right-click on Monitored Servers and select "Add Monitored Server". Add your server either by name or by searching the directory.

Once your server is added, right-click on your servername and select "Show Group Policy Object Status".

The Group Policy Object Status window shows you all of your group policy objects that are present in your environment along with their corresponding GUIDs. It also gives you Version and Sysvol Version information for replication purposes.

You can save this file out to a text file for safe keeping. Should you get a Userenv event that is pointing to a GPO GUID, you can open this file and see which group policy is giving you a problem or to which GPO the event is referring.

If the event if referring to a problem with the GPO, unlink the GPO and do a gpupdate on the server. Confirm that you get your ID 1704 in the application log. That event means that your group policies have been applied successfully. If group policies do not get applied successfully, you will get a Userenv error instead of the ID 1704. If unlinking the GPO resolves the problem, you have just isolated and confirmed that this GPO is your only problem. Either fix the GPO or delete it and recreate it if you don't want to try to figure out what is wrong with it. (If the GPO is either the Default Domain or the Default Domain Controllers GPO you can use the dcgpofix command to get those recreated.)

Hopes are that you used the RSOP to test your custom GPOs prior to introducing them into your production environment. You can get yourself in a situation that you, nor PSS, may not be able to get you out of if you don't take the time to pilot and test your GPOs first. Please take that extra time.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas to you all.

Stephanie