I’ve gotten a number of requests for the location of the ADM templates that I use in the XP-SP2 sessions I deliver.  I’ve posted on this before – but I thought it would be worth posting this information a second time….

First off – you’ll probably need to apply a patch to your servers / systems that you use to manage GPOs. Make sure to read the following Q article to get the right patch for the operating system you are using.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;[LN];842933

This will prevent the following nasty looking error message

"The following entry in the [strings] section is too long and has been truncated" error message when you try to modify or to view GPOs in Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Professional, or Windows 2000."

Once you are patched up, you can simply launch your group policy editor of choice from an XP-SP2 system.  It should have the proper ADM files installed as part of the service pack.  if you prefer to be absolutely sure you have the latest ones - you can download them manually from here and then copy them into the %windir%\inf directory of the system you use to manage group policy.  The default behaviour of the group policy console is to check the date/time stamp of the local ADM files and compare it to the server copy.  If the local is newer, it is used and copied up to the server.

Have you edited the original .ADM templates?  As a best practice, you should always leave the original ones alone and create your own.  This will prevent the long hard work you spent customizing the template from going down the drain when it gets overwritten by a newer .ADM template with the same name being copied up to the server automatically.

As I mention in my sessions - no worries about older versions of OSs using the latest version (XP-SP2) of the .ADM files - everything is cumulative.  You won't be damaing your Windows 2000 gpo setting when you use the newer ADM templates. 

Happy GPO editing!