Every now and then I’ve needed to configure Group Policy settings locally or offline and backup/restore them to another computer. Here’s a simple way to do so. It can even be used to bake the settings into an image for mass deployments. This is documented from a Windows 7 system box, but it may work with other down-level versions. This method was easy and efficient for me, does anyone have an easier or official way?

1. Open the Local Group Policy MMC (Start –> Run –> “gpedit.msc”

2. Configure the required settings.

3. Copy the contents of C:\Windows\System32\GroupPolicy to wherever you want to keep the source Group Policy settings.

4. Copy the contents back onto the system you want to have the same settings, including your reference system if you’re building an image.