Having originally skipped Vista and going to Windows 7 I am now looking to upgrade some of our Vista Licenced PCs from XP before support ends for use in low interaction scenarios (powering notice boards for instance). However I am unable to get Vista to process the Computer Policy from any of our GPOs, including a policy that I created to test this issue and explicitly left blank. User Policy is processed without issue in Vista and all GPOs have been tested and function without issue for both User and Computer Policy on both Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7 SP1 x64.
I have tested clean installs of Vista at different Service Pack levels, both installed and slipstreamed and both with and without Group Policy Client Side Extensions installed but all fail to apply Computer Policy.
The information from all the tests in this thread were obtained from a clean Windows Vista SP2 install which was then updated to the latest levels as of 21/03/2013 before being joined to the Domain.
Running GPUpdate returns the following error message:
User Policy update has completed successfully.
Computer policy could not be updated successfully. The following errors were encountered:
The processing of Group Policy failed. Windows attempted to read the file \\domain\SysVol\domain\Policies\{101E4FEE-80C9-4F98-8EAD-CA0509E6310A}\gpt.ini from a domain controller and was not successful. Group Policy settings may not be applied until this event
is resolved. This issue may be transient and could be caused by one or more of the following:
a) Name Resolution/Network Connectivity to the current domain controller.
b) File Replication Service Latency (a file created on another domain controller has not replicated to the current domain controller).
c) The Distributed File System (DFS) client has been disabled.
Running GPResult/r /scope computer states that Group Policy was applied when GPUpdate was last run.
Running GPResult /H Report.html /Z returns the following error message on Computer Configuration Summary\Component Status\Group Policy Infrastructure:
Group Policy Infrastructure failed due to the error listed below.
Access is denied.
Note: Due to the GP Core failure, none of the other Group Policy components processed their policy. Consequently, status information for the other components is not available.
Additional information may have been logged. Review the Policy Events tab in the console or the application event log for events between 25/03/2013 10:03:05 and 25/03/2013 10:03:07
Event Log shows GroupPolicy Errors with EventID 1058 and the same error message as GPUpdate but no error messages for Security-Kerberos, Schannel, or Time-Service as suggested by Lain Robertson - http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverGP/thread/82c7d149-2f2e-42d0-b712-d47cba739b8b/
The other tests of netdom /verify, ntp, windows firewall disabling and DNS lookup in that thread have been tried and either produce a result in line with the same tests performed on a Windows XP of Windows 7 PC or fail to make a difference.
In GPSVC.log I have found the following lines:
GPSVC(c.938) 10:17:52:291 GetDCNameFromGPTPath: NetDfsGetClientInfo() failed with error=0xa66 for GPT Path=\\domain\SysVol\domain\Policies\{101E4FEE-80C9-4F98-8EAD-CA0509E6310A}\gpt.ini
GPSVC(c.938) 10:17:52:291 ProcessGPO: Couldn't find the group policy template file <\\domain\SysVol\domain\Policies\{101E4FEE-80C9-4F98-8EAD-CA0509E6310A}\gpt.ini>, error = 0x5. DC: <null>
KB Article 950876 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950876) suggested some registry modifications which I have applied with no luck.
Auto-Tuning has been disabled as suggested by Brent Hu (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverGP/thread/ecdc00e4-13b7-43e6-8a81-9aad6d833070/) along with other suggestions in that thread (Except the MPS report) with no luck.
Two final points are that I can navigate to the GPO ini file and open it using both the domain UNC path and for good measure the DC UNC path and the account I am using has Domain Admin privileges.
I have spent several days testing this on and off and following every lead I can find on the subject but do not feel any closer to a solution. Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Matt