Choose between Group Policy preferences and policy settings

Starting with Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008, Group Policy (Team Policy) and previous versions have progressed even further. Careful administrators may have discovered that the latest version of Group Policy is divided into two sections of policy settings (Policy settings) and policy preferences (Policy Preferences). Where policy settings essentially inherit the primary content of previous version Group Policy, and policy preferences are new content, providing administrators with more granular settings.

The difference between Group Policy settings and preferences is mandatory. Group Policy settings are managed and enforced. Group Policy preferences are not managed, and are not mandatory.

For many system settings, administrators can implement either through policy settings or through policy preferences, with a significant portion of the overlap of 2. So when should you use policy preferences, and under what circumstances should you use policy settings? This article will solve this mystery for you.

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(In most cases, the policy settings for Group Policy are referred to as policies or policy settings, and "policy preferences for Group Policy" is referred to as "preferences")

Because preferences and policies overlap in some administrative areas, there are times when you can accomplish the same specific task in several ways. For example, you can specify a login script that must be used through a policy. In these scripts, you can map network drives, configure printers, create shortcuts, copy files and folders, and perform other tasks. With preferences, you can do the same task without having to log on to the script. So which method should you choose? Well, the truth is that there is no standard answer, and it does, depending on what you want to do. In the following sections, I will give you some general guidance.

A registry-based policy usually wins when policies and preferences in the same GPO collide. For policies and preferences that are not based on the registry, the last written value wins (depending on the order in which the policies and preferences are performed by client extensions) to determine whether the policy setting is based on the registry is simple because all policy settings based on the registry are defined in the Administrative template (administrative Templates).