ADM and ADMX Templates for Group Policy

ADM files. You either love 'em or you hate 'em. Or maybe both. That's because they're both necessary and confusing. And now there are ADMX files, a new format that can seemingly only add to the confusion. Well, it's time for me to shed some light on this cloudy subject.

Why Do We Need ADM Files?
Group Policy covers a wide range of areas. If you dive down into the Group Policy Object Editor (GPOE), you'll discover lots of different "stuff" you can do with Group Policy. For instance, you'll find Software Restriction Policy, Group Policy Software Installation, Folder Redirection, and, yes, the one we utilize most: Administrative Templates. The Administrative Templates node appears on both the User and Computer sides. As you'd expect, users can only embrace User-side policy settings and computers can only embrace Computer-side policy settings.

But where do all these magical settings within Administrative Templates come from? When new applications are "born," there are some settings you can potentially manipulate. That's where ADM files come into play. They describe the areas of the application that are ready to accept settings defined by an administrator. ADM files are limited right away, unfortunately, because they can only address Registry settings within an application. But an application might save its settings in other areas such as .ini files, .js files, .xml files, and databases.

Click here to read the rest of the article...