One of the most exciting things Windows Sever 2008 has to offer are its new Group Policy preference features. These features such as mapping drives or installing printers will work just fine on Windows Vista devices, but your Windows XP workstations and Windows 2003 Servers will need one more thing before you can expect to leverage Group Policy for their administration.
The reason for the issue is that the “Preference” settings now configurable in Group Policy require the installation of Group Policy Client Side Extensions (CSE) on Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server machines. Once these are installed, the GP preferences will apply as they should. Alternatively, these updates can be pushed to clients by WSUS. You can download the Group Policy CSE here: Windows XP 32-Bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=E60B5C8F-D7DC-4B27-A261-247CE3F6C4F8&displaylang=en Windows XP 64-Bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=CA802F38-0566-4AC4-8808-6515623C35C5&displaylang=en Windows Server 2003 32-Bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BFE775F9-5C34-44D0-8A94-44E47DB35ADD&displaylang=en
