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I'm just trying to find what takes precedence in loading a GPO.

Specifically, will drives map prior to scripts running?

I have an .exe in a network share that I'm running every time a user logs in, and I dont know if I should load it via the mapped drive or through the network path.

Matt Bear
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    How are you mapping the drive? Just as a side note, you almost *always* want to reference a path by UNC in anything you do - GPO, Scripts, etc. Make a DFS namespace so that the path stays the same across server migrations and ditch drive mappings for everything except convenience for end users. – MDMarra Dec 13 '12 at 19:30
  • drives are mapped through the GPO preference. I will be setting up the DFS namespace at some point, I'm just not there yet. (right now I'm deploying AD company wide, with ADFS, SSO, and o365, 450 users). Once I have all the machines domain joined, then I can set up the namespace. – Matt Bear Dec 13 '12 at 19:56
  • The .exe adds a trusted site for firefox, for SSO with o365 – Matt Bear Dec 13 '12 at 19:57
  • I never did get a good answer, but I tried to ask the same question a couple years ago. http://serverfault.com/questions/52370/what-is-the-order-group-policy-settings-are-applied – Zoredache Dec 13 '12 at 20:39

3 Answers3

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The order by which Group policy client extensions are processed is a fixed order.

You can see which order by checking the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\GPExtensions

HopelessN00b
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alt_92
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Within the same GPO, it's a little bit of black magic. What you can do is create two separate GPOs for each action and use precedence to order them in the way that you want them executed.

That said, you should really probably just use the UNC and take the drive mapping out of the equation.

MDMarra
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  • I am using just the UNC now, but I am still curious about the GPO precedence, for future knowledge – Matt Bear Dec 13 '12 at 20:51
  • The behavior of multiple policies inside the same GPO isn't really documented anywhere that I've seen. I'm curious too, so I dropped this question into [chat]. The general consensus there is that it's a bit of a head-scratcher. – MDMarra Dec 13 '12 at 20:52
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To semi answer my own question: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc739061(v=ws.10).aspx

GPO is applied prior to scripts being run. However it is still unclear about the precedence when the script is being called via the GPO...

Matt Bear
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