How to: Restore Missing Folders to the Group Policy Editor in Windows XP

When you open the Group Policy Editor in Windows XP Professional, some of the categories under Administrative Templates may be missing. For example when you expand Administrative Templates, the System category may be missing. This article provides information on how to restore the missing folders to the Group Policy Editor.

How:
Add the Missing ADM File
Method 1
1. Open the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc)
2. Expand Computer Configuration
3. Right-click Administrative Templates, and click Add/Remove Templates…

4. Click Add…
5. Select the file system.adm and click Open

 5. Click Close.

Method 2
Using Windows Explorer, copy the file system.adm from the C:\Windows\INF folder to C:\Windows\system32\GroupPolicy folder. In a standard Windows XP installation, the target folder has the following ADM files by default:

conf.adm
inetres.adm
wmplayer.adm
wuau.adm
system.adm

Copying the missing file from the ADM folder should restore the missing folder in the Group Policy Editor. If that does not work, make sure that filtering is turned off.

Turn Off Filtering

1. Expand Computer Configuration, and select Administrative Templates
2. From the View menu, click Filtering…
3. Uncheck the following checkboxes:

• Filter by Requirements information
• Only show configured Policy settings

4. Click OK