Group Policy Preferences Processing Order

Just to clarify something that people should be aware of, the Group Policy Preferences processing order. Within each CSE the settings are applied starting at number one and working down from there. I know it sounds obvious, but the documentation generally read as “starting with the highest”, which I think leaves room for confusion as “the highest” could mean it finishes with one, especially when you look in the context of Group Policy and that the last setting applied wins.

Anyway, one and down from there.

2 thoughts on “Group Policy Preferences Processing Order”

  1. When you have multiple items (preferences) configured within a specific scope of Group Policy Preferences (e.g., User Configuration or Computer Configuration), the order in which they are processed is determined by their position within the Group Policy Object (GPO) and not by the specific type of preference (such as Drive Maps, Scheduled Tasks, Registry settings, etc.).

    Within a GPO, Group Policy Preferences are processed sequentially in the order in which they appear within the GPO’s settings. Therefore, the item listed first within the GPO will be processed first, and the item listed last will be processed last.

    For example, if you have 10 Drive Map preferences configured within the “User Configuration” section of a GPO, the order of processing would be as follows:

    Drive Map 1 (Processed first)
    Drive Map 2
    Drive Map 3
    Drive Map 4
    Drive Map 5
    Drive Map 6
    Drive Map 7
    Drive Map 8
    Drive Map 9
    Drive Map 10 (Processed last)
    This sequential processing order applies to all preferences within a given scope (User Configuration or Computer Configuration) and ensures that preferences are applied in the order they are listed within the GPO.

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