Question

Programming group policy

Asked by: wayside

Can anyone give me some pointers on how to programmatically access and manipulate group policy?

For example, for a policy such as "Maximum password age" I'd like to be able to query for the setting, be able to tell which group policy object the setting came from, and possibly change the value on that group policy object.

I know (in this case) I can use NetUserModalsGet() to find this out, but it doesn't give any indication about group policy.

The closest I've seen is in the Resultant Set of Policy snap-in (rsop.msc) which displays the policy, the value, and the source GPO. I can't figure out how to do it from the crappy MSDN docs though.

Any pointers to sample code would be greatly appreciated.

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Asked On
2007-07-06 at 07:29:20ID22679392
Tags

group

,

policy

,

programming

Topic

C++ Programming Language

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: jkrPosted on 2007-07-06 at 07:58:56ID: 19432258

Actually, GPO rules are plain registry stored values. The one you're looking for can be found at

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Netlogon\Parameters
maximumpasswordage REG_DWORD

For general info on GP and coding, see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374177.aspx ("Group Policy") and the samples at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa375115.aspx ("Using Group Policy")

To illustrate the not-so-special nature of the whole area, see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa373486.aspx ("Checking the Registry for Policies and Preferences")

 

by: waysidePosted on 2007-07-06 at 09:03:30ID: 19432792

Yes, I know that the value of many policies is stored in the registry, however many are not (and in fact, the PolicySettings.xls spreadsheet you can download from MSDN says of "Maximum password age" that "Password Policy security settings are not registry keys", so I'm not sure whether the registry key you referenced is actually valid).

And in fact if I use regmon to monitor a program calling NetUserModalsGet(), that registry key is not accessed.

In any case, a registry setting doesn't tell me whether the policy value came from the domain setting settings policy, the local security settings policy, or if I am looking at a domain controller, the domain controller security settings policy.

 

by: jkrPosted on 2007-07-06 at 09:16:44ID: 19432874

>>And in fact if I use regmon to monitor a program calling NetUserModalsGet(),
>>that registry key is not accessed.

... because ist is already read at startup? ;o)

The interesting part to check would be to change the value and see if it has any effect.

 

by: waysidePosted on 2007-07-06 at 10:23:53ID: 19433385

> because ist is already read at startup? ;o)

Maybe it is, the fact remains that it is documented to not be a registry setting, so I don't want to trust it.

Anyway, it's less important for me to be able to change it than to know which policy the setting originated from.

Do you know of any better code samples than what is in MSDN?

 

by: jkrPosted on 2007-07-06 at 12:03:03ID: 19434171

There are hardly any samples on MSDN, except perhaps the GPMC Interfaces: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/En-US/library/aa814147.aspx

But for waht you can test using the registry, see http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/gp/gpref.mspx ("Group Policy Registry Table")

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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