How to use the Microsoft Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer (GPDBPA) tool to collect and to analyze data

You can use the Microsoft Group Policy Diagnostic Best Practice Analyzer (GPDBPA) tool to collect data about an environment's Group Policy configuration. For example, you can use this tool to analyze a Group Policy configuration for the following purposes:

• To search for common configuration errors
• To discover and to diagnose problems
• To collect data for archiving

The account that you use to run the tool must have the appropriate permissions to access both the Active Directory database on an environment's domain controllers and the SYSVOL file structure that is maintained on those domain controllers. Additionally, the account must have local Administrator permissions on the Group Policy client.

There are two additional prerequisites for using the GPDBPA tool:

• The Microsoft .NET Framework version 1.1 or a later version must be installed on the computer on which the GPDBPA tool is installed.
• The Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) service must be running on the environment's domain controllers.

The GPDBPA tool is an automated health-check and troubleshooting tool. The tool is written in the C# language, and it collects configuration settings. The tool also performs tests against the Group Policy configuration of an environment. After the tool collects these test results in an XML output file, rules are then applied to the data that is collected in this file. Any differences between these rules and the data that is collected are highlighted.

The GPDBPA tool is a stand-alone program that an administrator can run from a Windows Server 2003-based system or from a Windows XP-based system. You can use the tool to do the following:

• Perform a proactive health check on the Group Policy environment to detect common configuration errors that frequently generate support incidents.
• Collect diagnostic information and initial data from an environment, and then automate some analysis of that data.
• Obtain a snapshot of the Group Policy configuration for archiving. This data may be a useful reference if a future problem occurs.

To obtain the GPDBPA tool

To obtain the command-line version and the graphical user interface (GUI) version of the GPDBPA tool, download the .exe file from the following Microsoft download sites:

• Windows Server 2003 x86 editionhttp://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=47F11B02-8EE4-450B-BF13-880B91BA4566
• Windows Server 2003 x64 editionhttp://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=70E0EDEC-66F7-4499-83B7-4F2009DF2314
• Windows XP x86 editionhttp://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=70E4A971-DA91-4D4F-BF92-5C75A84F3742
• Windows XP x64 editionhttp://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=317C372C-0FE3-4AD0-BE52-2FF3004DAEF0