COMMAND

    registry

SYSTEMS AFFECTED

    WinNT

PROBLEM

    Benjamin Kuit found  following. This is  not a problem  or feature
    of  Samba  as  a  PDC,  but  is  of  interest to people setting up
    domains.

    The problem he had was that he had the strange phenomenon  whereby
    a  particular  profile  would  inhibit  the  inforcement of policy
    settings, eg the 'shut down' menu option would show, control panel
    was accessable, regedit was able to be run etc, and it was unclear
    why  a  profile  could  disable  the  effects  of the policy.  The
    problem  seems  to  fall  to  a  registry  size  limit  on  the NT
    workstation, which can be accessed  by Control Panel -> System  ->
    Performance -> (Virt. Mem)Change

    This brings up  the Virtual Memory  properties dialog box,  and at
    the bottom of it shows current and maximum registry sizes.

SOLUTION

    The problem is the maximum registry  size that is set to the  same
    value  as  the  current  registry  size,  so  once the profile was
    loaded, there  simply isn't  any more  room for  the policy  to be
    loaded into the  registry, so the  policies dont take  any effect,
    and because it  doesn't give any  warning messages for  not having
    enough room, it remains a mystery  to most people.  This could  be
    a source of alot  of 'my policies dont  work' type problems.   The
    moral of the story is: Check the maximum registry size.  For  more
    relevant or helpful information on registry size limits:

      Q176083: System Is Running Low on Registry Quota
        http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q176/0/83.ASP

      Q124594: Understanding and Configuring Registry Size Limit (RSL)
        http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q124/5/94.asp

      Q126402: PagedPoolSize and NonPagedPoolSize Values in Windows NT
        http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q126/4/02.ASP

      Q189119: UserEnv Returns Corrupted Profile for All Failures Including RSL Exceeded
        http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q189/1/19.ASP

      Q152721: Low on Registry Quota Error Gives Wrong Steps for Resolution
        http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q152/7/21.asp

      Q171793: Information on Application Use of 4GT RAM Tuning
        http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q171/7/93.ASP