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Will I be able to load Windows Vista Group Policies on a Windows Server 2003/2000 Domain Controller?

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Q. Will I be able to load Windows Vista Group Policies on a Windows Server 2003/2000 Domain Controller?

A. If you are asking if Windows Vista GPO templates can be put on a Server 2000 or Server 2003 domain controller the answer is yes. The XML-based .ADMX files (no longer .ADM files) for Windows Vista get put in a "PolicyDefinitions" folder under Sysvol\Policies. This one instance of these files replicates to each Domain Controller. That's all that really needs to be done to implement the .ADMX templates. This is superior to including these templates in every policy object and replicating them (about 2-4MB) through Sysvol replication to all Domain Controllers in every policy separately (2MB x hundreds of policies… you get the idea). This works on any version of Active Directory. You can then create policies for Windows 2000-Windows Vista off of those templates. Policies are backwards compatible, but newer policies not supported in older operating systems are ignored.