Troubleshooting a Group Policy Processing Error

Q: I’m seeing a lot of events with ID 1058 (Windows cannot access the file gpt.ini for GPO) and ID 1030 (Windows cannot query for the list of Group Policy objects) in my application event logs on my client machines whenever Group Policy is processed, and Group Policy seems to be failing. What’s causing these errors?

A: These errors are common, and unfortunately there’s no one cause— or solution. These errors arise when the client computer can’t successfully read the Sysvol portion of a Group Policy Object (GPO), which is where the gpt.ini file is stored. Most often, these errors occur because Windows’ networking stack doesn’t initialize in time for Group Policy processing to occur. In such cases, you’ll typically see that computer processing of Group Policy will fail, but then user processing of Group Policy will succeed. There are a couple of Microsoft articles that address these network timing problems, including “Group Policy application fails on a computer that is running Windows 2000, Windows XP Service Pack 1, or Windows XP Service Pack 2” (support.microsoft .com/?kbid=840669), which helps you fix a variety of these problems, and “How to disable the Media Sensing feature for TCP/IP in Windows” (support. microsoft.com/?kbid=239924), which may also help with these types of problems, especially in wireless scenarios. The article “A client connected to an Ethernet switch may receive several logon-related error messages during startup” (support. microsoft.com/?kbid=202840) can also apply in certain scenarios where your network switch is not initializing a system’s Ethernet port by the time Windows has started up.

The class of problems in which these events occur are when the gpt. ini is either missing for a given GPO or the permissions on it are such that the user or computer can’t read them. In both cases, the error is usually the result of File Replication Service (FRS) problems with the Sysvol portion of a GPO on the domain controller (DC) that’s currently being used by the computer for Group Policy processing. The quickest way to check this kind of problem is to use the gpotool. exe utility that ships as part of Windows Vista, or, for earlier OS versions, in the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools. You can use Gpotool to check the consistency of GPOs across DCs within your environment. The quickest way to check for problems from a system on which you’re getting 1058 and 1030 event errors is to run Gpotool against the DC that the computer is currently using to process policy (usually a DC in its local Active Directory—AD—site) and compare that to the PDC-emulator DC, which is typically where Group Policy changes originate. In the following example, I use Gpotool to check the consistency of the Default Domain Policy GPO, including ACLs, on both my local DC (dc100) and my PDCemulator DC (sdm1):

gpotool /gpo:”Default Domain Policy”
/dc:sdm1,dc100 /checkacl /verbose

The /verbose option lets me see full details for each comparison. If I find a problem with either missing files on my local DC or incorrect permissions, then its time to break out the FRS troubleshooting tools, such as Sonar (www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=158cb0fbfe09- 477c-8148-25ae02cf15d8& DisplayLang=en) or try one of the techniques described in the Microsoft article “Applying Group Policy causes Userenv errors and events to occur on your computers that are running Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, or Windows 2000” (support.microsoft.com/?kbid=887303).