How to script GPO in Windows computers without Active Directory?

Posted by Peteris Krumins on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Peteris Krumins
Published on 2010-12-03T23:30:42Z Indexed on 2011/01/06 7:55 UTC
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Does anyone know how to script GPO for users in a Windows computer that is not on any Active Directory network?

I can't use GPMC because it doesn't work without a domain. I have been searching the net for the last couple of hours and all the solutions that I find are related to GPMC.

I'd imagine there are some objects in the GPO that are accessible via WMI? Does anyone know anything about that? I was unable to find any information about that.

Here is the situation I am trying to script:

I have 10 users on the machine, and I want to restrict what they are able to do on the machine. So I created 10 GPOs for each one of them. Now I want to apply a common policy to all of them. The only way to do it is to go through each of the GPO and do it manually. This is too time consuming, therefore I am seeking for a simpler solution.

I was unable to find a way to copy GPO from a user to a user. That would make it much easier, I would create a GPO for 1st user, then copy it over to all the other users, but no luck, couldn't find a way to copy GPOs.

The other method I tried was creating a GPO for the whole user group but it turns out you can't apply GPO to a group unless you use GPMC, which I can't cause the computer is not on any domain.

So I am thinking about scripting this whole process, but again I can't find any examples of how to access particular GPO objects for particular users and modify properties through WMI.

Any suggestions on the issue I am having?

Thanks!

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