Policy Information

Any application or component can define a policy. The policy will appear in the administrator user interface, and information that the administrator sets about the policy will migrate to the local computer's registry. The application or component that defines a policy must check the registry appropriately to enforce its own policy.

Policy information is typically added to a local registry in the following sequence:

1. Categories, policies, and parts are described in a template (.ADM) file. Windows 95 and Windows 98 ship with an ADMIN.ADM file containing all the policies that the system supports. The Microsoft Windows NT Resource Kit and Windows NT Server version 4.0 and later ship with three template files: WINNT.ADM, COMMON.ADM, and WINDOWS.ADM. Developers can also provide their own template files. For a description of the .ADM file format, see Template File Format.
2. The administrator runs the policy editor, which reads one or more policies and lists the available categories and policies. The administrator sets up the desired policies, and the policy editor uses registry functions to save the work to a policy (.POL) file. For a description of the .POL file format, see Policy File Format.
3. After the user logs on (and user profiles are reconciled if they are enabled), the policy downloader is activated. It determines where to find the file on the network, opens the policy file, and merges the appropriate computer, user, and user group policies into the local registry.