Okay.
So as I mentioned, the final kind of step in the process of troubleshooting can sometimes be getting
into the group policy trace logs that can be generated by group policy as it's doing its thing.
The tracing is really meant to be used when all other powers have failed.
So RSVP and event logs aren't giving you the data that you need.
You can't find out why group policy isn't being processed.
You've ruled out user error and replication issues, and so tracing is kind of your final step.
And the point here is it's really not for the faint of heart.
It's a very these trace logs are built for developers.
And so, you know, you at the in the best case, you might be able to glean some useful information
out of them.
I have, in fact, solved some problems in the past by using trace logs.
But it's usually maybe one in a hundred times that the trace log will be the thing that solves the problem
for me.
There's really two kinds of tracing or trace log areas.
There's the GP service trace which is used to be called user envy log in Windows XP and before but now
is called the SBC dot log.
And it really is the Microsoft Trace file for the group policy engine as a whole and all the steps that
it goes through to as far as, you know, group policy, core processing phase and then client site
extension phase.
And then each client site extension may have some tracing that it provides.
And the example that I'm going to give here is that.
Group policy preferences includes trace logs for each of the different group policy preferencing areas.
And that will provide detailed logging of what's happening when those group policy preferences kick
off.
Some Cscs do provide trace files as well, but they're not really well-documented.
And they're certainly not.
All of the Microsoft client side extensions provide traces, so that can make it a little difficult.
So you can enable the Group Policy Service trace by creating a registry value in the registry under
a key that I've shown up here on the slide.
And it really is a matter of turning it on when you need it and then turning it off when you don't.
Once it's set, the trace log gets created as a file, like I mentioned, called SBC log.
Under this folder.
Percent backslash window.
Percent backslash.
Debug backslash.
User mode.
And what it looks like is pretty much gobbledygook unless you know what you're looking for.
The first thing to note is the number in parentheses is the threat ID.
And why this is important is that you can actually see an example of the fact that group policy runs
on multiple threads.
So if computer processing is happening at the same time that user processing is happening, which is
very possible during a, for example, a GP update force command, you're essentially doing both or
kicking off both at the same time.
It's useful to have the thread ID to know which part of the cycle you're looking at on a given line.
And then there's the time stamp that provides the sort of a time interval between each step of the processing
cycle and the trace file, and it can provide lots of good detail about what's going on.
Now with respect to group policy preferences, trace logging, you've got this area under sys backslash,
group policy, backslash, logging and tracing that has the option in admin templates to enable trace
logging on a per client side extension or per group policy preferences area.
And you'll notice that once you enable it, you can set the level of logging you can turn on or off
tracing, and you can set the location of file system location for both user tracing and computer tracing
as well as RCP modeling.
We're planning tracing, which is something that I've actually never even used but is available out
there.
So, you know, this is another kind of tracing specific to group policy preferences that you can take
advantage of.
So let's go ahead and enable some tracing on our system and see what we can see.