Group Policy Preferences have been out for about 3 years now and so there have been a number web posts about what they are and how they are implemented. So I have created a list of links to other articles that from the Group Policy Team Blog and ohter places that help explain what Preference are and how you can use them in your environemtn.

Third Party Links

• MSServerAdmin: The One Reason You Should Use Group Policy Preferences – Printers
• GPO Guy: Group Policy Preferences Overview
• RDP Files: Group Policy Preferences aka GPPs

Microsoft Links

• Microsoft Support: Information about new Group Policy preferences in Windows Server 2008
• TechNet: Group Policy Preferences: Getting Started
• TechNet: Configure, Target, and Comment Preference Items
• TechNet: Preference Item-Level Targeting
• TechNet: Windows Settings
• TechNet: Control Panel Settings
• TechNet: Configure Common Options
• TechNet: Enable and Disable Settings
• TechNet: Variable in Preferences Items
• Group Policy Team Blog: GP Policy vs. Preference vs. GP preferences
• Group Policy Team Blog: Environment Variables in GP Preferences
• Group Policy Team Blog: Troubleshooting: Quick Fixes
• Group Policy Team Blog: GP Preferences Will Reduce Logon Scripts : Mapping Drives
• Group Policy Team Blog: Check a setting in all GPO’s continued (scripts, firewall, GP Preferences and more)
• Group Policy Team Blog: Security Filtering, WMI Filtering, and Item-level Targeting in Group Policy Preferences
• Group Policy Team Blog: How do I migrate PolicyMaker Items to Group Policy Preference Items?
• Group Policy Team Blog: Passwords in Group Policy Preferences (updated)
• Group Policy Team Blog: Red / Green Underlining continued: Using Preferences to set IE settings like preference, or like policy

My take…

Group Policy Preferences are a heap of new Group Policy settings that were released with Windows Server 2008 that allows IT administrators to pretty much do anything they want to configured computers in an corporate environmnet. Preferences only require a Windows 2000 Active Directory and they need to be manageded from a minumum of Windows Vista/2008 however they can be applied to Windows XP Service Pack 2 (or greater) workstations.

You can see all the articles on this site about Group Policy Preferences at https://www.grouppolicy.biz/tag/group-policy-preferences/