{{unreferenced, date=July 2010 Administrative Templates are a feature of

Group Policy Group Policy is a feature of the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems (including Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server 2003+) that controls the working environment of user accounts and computer accounts. G ...

, a

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

technology for centralized management of machines and users in an

Active Directory Active Directory (AD) is a directory service developed by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. It is included in most Windows Server operating systems as a set of processes and services. Initially, Active Directory was used only for centralize ...

environment. Administrative Templates facilitate the management of registry-based policy. An ADM file is used to describe both the user interface presented to the Group Policy administrator and the registry keys that should be updated on the target machines. An ADM file is a text file with a specific syntax which describes both the interface and the registry values which will be changed if the policy is enabled or disabled. ADM files are consumed by the Group Policy Object Editor (GPEdit).

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

Service Pack 2 shipped with five ADM files (system.adm, inetres.adm, wmplayer.adm, conf.adm and wuau.adm). These are merged into a unified "namespace" in GPEdit and presented to the administrator under the Administrative Templates node (for both machine and user policy).

Syntax

A simple ADM example follows: CLASS MACHINE CATEGORY "Wikipedia Apps" POLICY "Wikipedia" KEYNAME "Software\WikiSoft\Preferences" EXPLAIN "Configures WikiSoft Preferences" VALUENAME "SharingEnabled" VALUEON "Yes" VALUEOFF "No" END POLICY END CATEGORY A valid ADM file must have the following keywords: * Class - either MACHINE or USER * Category - Defines organizational structure of ADM and where it will be displayed in the GPEdit window. * Policy - Groups definitions into one node and configuration screen of the GPEdit tree Optional keywords used include: * Keyname - used to define what

registry Registry may refer to: Computing * Container registry, an operating-system-level virtualization registry * Domain name registry, a database of top-level internet domain names * Local Internet registry * Metadata registry, information system for re ...

key will be affected View Filtering must be turned off in order to see custom preference settings (such as this example) in the Group Policy Editor.

ADM files across different platforms

It is important to note that ADM files shipped with Microsoft operating systems include descriptions of policy settings for not just that platform but for all other platforms on which Group Policy is supported. For example, the Windows XP Service Pack 2 ADM files described policy settings not just for this platform but also for

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), releas ...

and

Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003 is the sixth version of Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows NT family of operating systems and was released to manufacturing on March 28, 2003 and generally available on April 24, 2 ...

. This approach allows management of machines that are running an operating system other than that on which GPEdit is used.

Managing ADM files

By default, ADM files are stored in each GPO, within Sysvol on

domain controllers On Microsoft Servers, a domain controller (DC) is a server computer that responds to security authentication requests (logging in, etc.) within a Windows domain. A ''domain'' is a concept introduced in Windows NT whereby a user may be granted access ...

. This creates a simple and effective model for replicating ADM files across domain controllers (which is handled by the

File Replication Service File Replication Service (FRS) is a Microsoft Windows Server service for distributing shared files and Group Policy Objects. It replaced the (Windows NT) Lan Manager Replication service, and has been partially replaced by Distributed File System Rep ...

). However, in some instances this can cause operational issues. To this end, various policy settings are available to manage the manner in which ADM files are read and stored. These are described in Microsoft's KB article 816662.

External links

Important information about Windows XP Service Pack 2 ADM Files (KB 842933)

Recommendations for managing Group Policy Administrative Templates (.ADM) Files (KB 816662)
Microsoft server technology Active Directory Windows administration