Windows 10 or Windows 11 GPO ADMX – Which One To Use For Your Central Store?

Hi community,

My name is Helmut Wagensonner. I’m a Customer Engineer at Microsoft and this blog should help you to understand, which Administrative Templates (admx) to choose for your Windows 11 / Windows 10 mixed environment.

 
First of all let me say that both versions of the ADMX templates mentioned below, can be used with Windows 10 as well as with Windows 11. They are indentical except very few settings. This article is only about how to configure a setting, which is missing in one of the templates. Once configured your GPOs will work on both operating systems.

As long as we support Windows 10 it could occur that new Windows 10 features are not reflected in Windows 11 ADMX files and vice versa. The table at the end of this article shows differences between the Win10 and Win11 templates (as of Dec 16, 2021).

So what to do if you have a mixed environment of both client operating systems? Well, fact is that you can only copy one set of ADMX files to your Active Directory’s Central Store. Depending on what your future plans are, you should decide which templates fit best. If you plan to stay on Windows 10 for a while, you should choose the Windows 10 ADMX files. If you’re ready to upgrade to Windows 11 and this will become your dominating OS version (or it already is), you should copy the Windows 11 ADMX files to your Central Store.

But can you configure new Windows 10 policies if your central store contains the Windows 11 ADMX files? Well, you can! You just need to do this from a separate client. The steps below explain the approach.

• Install a client with Windows 10 21H2 (important!) operating system and join it to your domain.
• Log on with an user with administrative rights.
• Right-click on your start menu and choose “Apps and Features”
  
• Choose “Optional Features”
  
• Choose “Add a Feature”
  
• Search for “RSAT: Group Policy Management Tools” and click the “Install” button.
  
• After successful installation you will find a “Group Policy Management” item in the “Windows Administrative Tools” folder in your start menu.
  
• Open your Registry Editor and add following registry value:
  Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Group Policy
  Value: EnableLocalStoreOverride
  Type: REG_DWORD
  Data: 1
  
• Restart your computer and log on with a user account that has the right to edit domain Group Policy objects.
• Run the “Group Policy Management” from your start menu and open the desired GPO for edit. The Administrative Templates should now be taken from the client’s local store instead of the central store.
  

Following table illustrates differences between Windows 10 21H2 and Windows 11 21H2 ADMX files.

Further resources you might find useful:

GPO Settings Reference Spreadsheet for Windows 10 21H2
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=103668

GPO Settings Reference Spreadsheet for Windows 11 21H2
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=103506

ADMX templates for Windows 10 21H2
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=103667

ADMX templates for Windows 11 21H2
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=103507

Edit 03/02/22: Please note that the list of differences shown above may not be complete. This is just a guiding reference. Also, there may be updated ADMX versions, which change the number of differences between Windows 10 and Windows 11 ADMX in either way. The table above shows differences at time of writing this article.

Edit: 07/02/22: Re-wrote some parts of the article because it could be misunderstood.

Edit: 07/01/23: The ADMX file issue has been fixed. The missing Win 10 settings have been added to the Win 11 ADMX files, with exception of the datacollection.admx (see blue box above).