Migrate Group Policy ADM files to ADMX files using ADMX Migrator

December 13th, 2008 by Aseem | File in: Tools Review

If you’ve started using Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 in your environment, you may have noticed the new Group Policy ADMX format. This new format for Group Policy templates takes advantage of new features and capabilities.

The new ADMX format for displaying registry-based policy settings are defined using XML now, instead of the proprietary format that ADM files used. The new templates come with a lot more settings, almost 2,400 in Windows Vista, which is several hundred more than Windows XP.

So what are the new features of ADMX files as opposed to ADM files? Well they support a lot of the new features in Windows Vista, such as security settings, power management, and device installation.

The XML-format ADMX files also include multilanguage support, version control capabilities, and a centralized store. One thing to note is that the new ADMX files can only be edited on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 machines.

So if you have a bunch of ADM files on your Windows 2003 Server and you want to import the settings into Windows Server 2008, you’ll first have to convert them. This is pretty easy to do using a free tool.

ADMX Migrator is a free utility from FullArmor and supported by Microsoft that allows you to migrate ADM templates to ADMX templates using a simple and easy to use GUI interface.

Once you download the program and run it, click on Generate ADMX from ADM to begin the process of migrating the template files.

Now choose your ADM file and click OK. The ADM file will be converted to the new ADMX format and you will be prompted to save the ADMX file to a temporary location. Once you have saved it, you can go into the Group Policy Management Console on a Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 machine and import the Group Policy template.

The other cool thing about the program is that it will automatically detect any items that cannot be validated against the ADMX schema and will add them to an Unsupported section. So if you have a custom ADM file and some settings will not work, they will be separated out in their own section.

You can also use ADMX Migrator to edit and or create new Administrative Templates. It speeds up the creation of new Group Policy templates because you can choose settings from menus rather than having to manually type them in a text file.