Troubleshooting Change and Configuration Management

Published Application Does Not Appear

You publish applications in a Group Policy object, and the user who is managed by the Group Policy object logs on. He or she clicks Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel, but no applications appear in the Add New Programs list box.

Possible Causes:

The user is running Terminal Services on the desktop.
The Group Policy object does not apply to this user. For example, the user might be filtered out of the Group Policy object by a security group.
The user has not logged on since the Group Policy object was created.
Group Policy did not run.
The Appmgmt extension does not run.
The user cannot access Active Directory.
The user cannot access the software distribution point.

Diagnostic Tests:

Use Addiag.exe to see if Terminal Services is running.

Open the Group Policy object with the Group Policy snap-in, and make sure the Group Policy object manages the user.

Have the user log off and then log back on. Verify that the user does not log on with cached credentials — that is, that the user is authenticated by a domain controller.

Run Gpresult.exe to verify that Group Policy runs.

Run Addiag.exe to verify that the Appmgmt extension runs.

Check to see that the user can access Active Directory. If they are validated by a Windows 2000 domain controller, they can access Active Directory.

To test basic connectivity and permissions

Ping the domain controller by IP address to test base-level connectivity.
Ping the domain controller by server name to test the DNS server.
Use the Net view command to view \\ServerName\Sysvol to see if the user has rights to read the Sysvol.
Check to see if the user can access the software distribution point.
Ping the software distribution point by IP address to test base-level connectivity.
Ping the software distribution point by server name to test the DNS server.
Use the net view command to view \\ServerName\AppShares to see if the user has rights to read the software distribution point.