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ADM files are not present in SYSVOL in the GPMC Infrastructure Status option

Article ID: 2741591 - View products that this article applies to.

Symptoms

When you examine Group Policy replication by using the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) Infrastructure Status option that was introduced in Windows Server 2012, you notice that all domain controllers report "replication in progress." Additionally, when you examine the SYSVOL share on the domain controllers, you notice that administrative template (ADM) files are not present in SYSVOL except on the primary domain controller (PDC) emulator. Additional examination shows that SYSVOL was previously configured by an administrator to filter out ADM files in order to minimize size.

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Cause

The GPMC Infrastructure Status option does not examine files in SYSVOL by type or capability and does not follow customized File Replication Service (FRS) or Distributed File Service Replication (DFSR) filtering rules. Any file count, hash, or security differences in the SYSVOL Policies folder contents between domain controllers are flagged as "replication in progress."

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Workaround

This behavior is by design. There are several ways to work around this behavior. In descending order of recommendation, they are as follows:

Change Group Policy from computers that are running Windows Vista or a later version of Windows by using a centralized ADMX store together with filters, and delete the existing ADM files from SYSVOL.
Change Group Policy from computers that are running Windows Vista or a later version of Windows by using local copies of ADMX. (This is the default behavior.) Delete the existing ADM files from SYSVOL
Use an alternative tool to GPMC Infrastructure Status. Do not use Group Policy Verification Tool (gpotool.exe).
Remove the filters, and let ADM files replicate to all domain controllers.

ADM files are not used for Group Policy processing unless you created non-Microsoft custom ADM files. They are used only for editing and RSoP logging from Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. These operating systems are in their extended support life cycle. This file type was replaced in Windows Vista, and a centralized SYSVOL store was added in 2007.

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More information

The GPMC Infrastructure Status option does not examine folders outside the Policies folder contents. For example, it does not examine NETLOGON or the central ADMX store PolicyDefinitions folder.

For more information, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

929841

(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929841)

How to create the Central Store for Group Policy Administrative Template files in Windows Vista

813338

(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/813338)

How to minimize SYSVOL size by removing administrative templates (.adm files)

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