In this post I will be sharing you how to install Windows 11 Administrative templates. Administrative templates which consists of admx files and language based adml files are used for Group Policy administration to support new settings and features which gets introduced in latest version of Windows product.
Download Windows 11 Administrative templates
Windows 11 ADMX templates can be downloaded from ADMX Templates for Windows 11 October 2021 Update [21H2]
Once downloaded, we will have following file downloaded and ready to install:
Administrative Templates (.admx) for Windows 11 October 2021 Update.msi
Install Administrative Templates for Windows 11
Run the msi file on a system to extract the admx and adml files.
One Welcome to the Administrative Templates (.admx) page, click Next.
Accept the user agreement, on Custom Setup click Next (alternatively you can specify location to extract the files).
On Ready to install Administrative Templates (.admx) page, click Install.
Once installed, files are extracted under C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Group Policy\Windows 11 October 2021 Update (21H2)\PolicyDefinitions with all admx files and separate folders for each language pack (which consists of adml files) supporting the language.
Administrative templates are published for following languages:
cs-CZ Czech – Czech Republic
da-DK Danish – Denmark
de-DE German – Germany
el-GR Greek – Greece
en-US English – United States
es-ES Spanish – Spain
fi-FL Finnish – Finland
fr-FR French – France
hu-HU Hungarian – Hungary
it-IT Italian – Italy
ja-JP Japanese – Japan
ko-KR Korean – Korea
nb-NO Norwegian (Bokmål) – Norway
nl-NL Dutch – The Netherlands
pl-PL Polish – Poland
pt-BR Portuguese – Brazil
pt-PT Portuguese – Portugal
ru-RU Russian – Russia
sv-SE Swedish – Sweden
tr-TR Turkish – Turkey
zh-CN Chinese – China
zh-TW Chinese – Taiwan
Following are the new admx files specifically created / updated to support Windows 11 administrative templates:
feeds.admx
grouppolicypreferences.admx
grouppolicy-server.admx
mmcsnapins2.admx
performanceperftrack.admx
terminalserver-server.admx
windowsmediadrm.admx
windowsmediaplayer.admx
windowsserver.admx
searchocr.admx
Corresponding adml files are also created which can be seen in language folder such as en-US etc.
Copy Administrative Templates to Central Store (PolicyDefinitions)
Let’s proceed with how to install Group Policy Administrative templates, installation is nothing but copying the downloaded files to Active Directory’s Central Store. Downloaded Administrative templates needs to be copied to the Central store for Group Policy in Active Directory setup. Once copied to this central location, all other domain controllers will replicate and use the policyDefinitions.
Central store can be accessed through following location \\<domainname.com>\SYSVOL\domainname.com\policies\PolicyDefinitions
If you are importing admx templates for very first time PolicyDefinitions folder will not exist and you need to create it manually.
In my case, the location of Central store is \\manban.com\SYSVOL\manban.com\policies
Create an empty folder with the name PolicyDefinitions under \\manban.com\SYSVOL\manban.com\policies
If you already have PolicyDefinitions folder with previous imported admx templates, it is always recommended to perform backup of this folder before performing below mentioned task.
Copy all admx files extensions from C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Group Policy\Windows 11 October 2021 Update (21H2)\PolicyDefinitions to \\manban.com\SYSVOL\MANBAN.COM\Policies\PolicyDefinitions
Copy en-US folder only (in case you wanted to support other languages choose other folder as well) to PolicyDefinitions folder
This is how PolicyDefinitions folder will look like, list of all admx templates along with language specific folder en-Us containing adml files to support admx templates.
We can now access the group policy through Group Policy Management (gpmc.msc) and explore new policies.