Tired of making Policy Template Files manually, I went looking for a tool that would help me. After searching on the internet I found only one and rather expensive too. That's why I decided to make one of my own. I realize that it doesn't cover 100% of the area as Microsoft intended. But it is sufficient to work with. I left all the exotic options out of the program. So it won't support conditional statements or support for custom labels.
The original requirements were:
At least 16 Mb RAM
Screen with 800x600 resolution
Pentium processor 133 Mhz or higher
At least 10 Mb free space on your hard disk
If you installed an earlier version of the program you must un-install it first before installing newer one!
Nowadays all computers will do.
You must have knowledge of building system policy template files.
The program doesn't support the following keywords: #ELSE, #ENDIF, #IF, #IFDEF,#IFNDEF, SOFT and VERSION. These keywords are used to create conditional templates. This program doesn't support it.
Comments in an existing template are removed. Comments do use space and under windows '9x space is limited.
Original string tables will be deleted and completely rebuild if the option "save strings in string tables" in the "options" menu is checked. All alphanumeric data is sorted and combined.
Some functions are only available at the NT platform. The are marked with"(NT only)"
New functions introduced with Windows 2000 in the [strings] section as "newline" and "line break" are not supported.
New keywords introduced with Windows 2000 like HELP, CLIENTEXT, EXPLAIN and NOSORT are not supported.
AltGr + M can be used to activate menus on the screens this done to enable peopleto use their keyboard instead of the mouse. If you want to use the keyboard to drag and drop on the overview window you must install theaccessability features of windows.
Action lists can be accessed by pressing the edit button. If pressed a list will be presented with all the actions. Actions can be edited by right clicking on the list.
On the options menu there is a special option with the name "save strings in string table" this is an option you should use with care. If you check this option it will rebuild the string table using its own names! If you don't want this you shouldn't use this option. If you use it it has many advantages; this program will sort all constants, key names, value names and values for you! With the internal text editor you can modify entries to make the whole template a lot smaller.
It is possible to convert a .reg file to a policy template file. The following rules will be followed when converting a .reg file:
Only settings for "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" and "HKEY_CURRENT_USER" are converted.
HEX entries will be converted to TEXT parts because binary values are not supported in POLEDIT
DWORD entries will be converted to NUMERIC parts only when the value is lessor equal to 9999
All others will be converted as EDITTEXT parts
Each key will result in a CATEGORY
Each value will result in a POLICY
To convert a .reg file just open it from the file menu.
Other information you can find in the readme.htm file in the application directory.
Enjoy the Policy Template File Editor!
VB Runtime 6 SP6 (from Microsoft site) is required to run the Policy Template File Editor Policy Template File Editor
You can report bugs or ask questions by sending an e-mail to me