Resolve GUID to Group Policy Display Name

Today I am troubleshooting some error messages in the event log of a Windows Domain Controller on a customer site. The customer site contains a Windows 2003 Active Director. I will use an Windows 2008 r2 management server to troubleshoot this issue. The AD management and policy management roles and features are installed on this server.

The error message state that some Group Policy Objects are not applied due to a authentication error. This is an generic error that can have many, many causes. To troubleshoot this issue I first have to find which policy is causing these error messages.

image

 

All I have to go on is the policy GUID (Globally Unique Identifier). GUIDs are usually stored as 128-bit values, and are commonly displayed as 32 hexadecimal digits with groups separated by hyphens and enclosed by braces.

The easiest way to resolve the policy GUID to the Policy display name is by using PowerShell.

image

First you have to import the GroupPolicy module to be able to use the GroupPolicy related CmdLets. Now that this module is loaded in memory we can execute the command we need to use.
GET-GPO –GUID “{GUID}”

After you execute this command you are presented with a little table with information about the troubled policy object.
Now I can locate the troubled group policy in the policy management console and solve the problem. The problem turned out be a configuration mistake in the configuration of a user account.