Windows cannot access the file gpt.ini for GPO CN={31B2F340-016D-11D2-945F-00C04FB984F9}

Question

I'm in the middle of a "swing" migration from Windows SBS 2003 to Server 2003 Standard.

It's going okay so far but we're getting event 1058 on client machines:

Windows cannot access the file gpt.ini for GPO CN={31B2F340-016D-11D2-945F-00C04FB984F9},CN=Policies,CN=System,DC=Edgebyte,DC=local. The file must be present at the location <\ourdomain.local\sysvol\ourdomain.local\Policies{31B2F340-016D-11D2-945F-00C04FB984F9}\gpt.ini>. (The system cannot find the path specified. ). Group Policy processing aborted.

Logon works fine but no group policies are being applied anywhere.

Looking back at the original SBS box, if you go into Group Policy Management you get "file not found" messages whenever you try to right click on a GPO and click Edit. I suspect this has been broken for a long time (part of the point of the migration is to replace the hardware, which is suspect).

We don't care about keeping any of the group policies (there aren't that many anyway) - so I just need to know how to remove all the group policies from Server 2003 standard, and regenerate the contents of the Policies folder in sysvol, so we can start again with a clean slate.

Any takers?

Tom

Answer 1

Problems with Swing Migration usually center around AD replication and the NTFRS service not working correctly. On a SBS server, which is typically stand-alone and doesn't replicate anything, these problems can go unnoticed for a long time with virtually no ill effect - until you add another domain controller into the network then the synchronization issues suddenly come into sharp relief. Check the event log for any problems with NTFRS, you need to hunt them down and eliminate them all, or you will never be able to swing.

Once NTFRS is working, I would try to use the Group Policy Management Console on the original SBS server to delete the policies. Then replicate AD with the policies already deleted to your new server. It's no good trying to just delete the files, the items need to be removed from Active Directory. Jeff Middleton at SBS Migration is a fellow SBS MVP and he is very good at sorting out these problems, he's seen most of them before. Use your included support incidents or buy some more, it'll be money well spent.