Microsoft offers new Group Policy templates for Vista. You probably know that in Vista the Administrative template files (ADM) were replaced with the XML-based ADMX format. Please, check out this article for more information about ADM and ADMX. I compared the new templates with the ones which come with Vista.

You can find the ADMX templates on a Vista machine under %systemroot%\PolicyDefinitions\. The ADMX files in the download are identical. However, there are four new templates:

• adfs.admx: Prevents a Federation Service in Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) from being installed or run.
• pswdsync.admx: This policy setting allows you to manage the extensive logging feature for the Password Sync component.
• servermanager.admx: This policy setting allows you to turn off the automatic display of Server Manager at logon.
• snis.admx: This policy setting allows you to manage the extensive logging feature for the Server for Network Information Service (SNIS) servers.

All four templates seem to be server related. And indeed, all can be found in the template folder of Windows Server 2008. The strange thing is that Windows Server 2008 (Beta 3) comes with seven more ADMX files. I wonder why they are not in this download.

If you are working for an international organization, you’ll appreciate that the download also contains all available ADML files. They allow administrators to work with the descriptions of the administrative templates in their own language even though they are using the same ADMX files in the central store.

To work with the new templates, you only have to copy the four new ADMX files to %systemroot%\PolicyDefinitions or to the central store on the server.

By the way, do you want to know how I found out that there are only four new ADMX templates, but all other files are identical? I used the free Winmerge tool to find the differences in both directories.