Back Up Group Policy Settings Quickly and Easily!

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Have you ever made changes to your Group Policy settings and wanted to save them, but the timing didn't coincide with the schedule established for backing up server data? If so, here is a really useful tip!

It's easy to back up only the group policy settings on your Windows SBS computer without having to create a complete backup of the server. Not only that, you can also restore Group Policy settings from this backup copy without having to do a complete restore of the server. Here's how:

 

To create a backup of all Windows SBS 2003 Group Policy Objects (GPOs)

  1. Click Start, and then click Server Management.
  2. In the console tree, click Advanced Management, double-click Group Policy Management, double-click Forest: <domainname>, double-click domainname, right-click Group Policy Objects, and then click Back Up All.
  3. In the Back Up Group Policy Object dialog box:

a. Under Location, enter the name of the folder in which you want to store the backup of the GPOs.

b. Under Description, enter a description (for example, SBS GPOs) to easily identify the file that contains the backup.

c. Click Backup.

To restore a Windows SBS 2003 Group Policy Object

  1. Click Start, and then click Server Management.
  2. In the console tree, click Advanced Management, double-click Group Policy Management, double-click Forest: <domainname> , double-click domainname, double-click Group Policy Objects, right-click the GPO that you want to restore from a backup, and then click Restore From Backup.
  3. In the Restore Group Policy Object Wizard:

a. On the Backup location page, enter the name of the folder that contains the backup, and then click Next.

b. On the Source Group Policy Object page, under Backed Up Group Policy Objects, select the backup from which you want to restore the GPO settings, and then click Next.

c. Click Finish.

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.