Windows cannot access the file gpt.ini for GPO CN={31B2F340-016D-11D2-945F-00C04FB984F9}

I was getting an error on my Windows XP workstations:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Userenv
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1058
Date: 22/09/2010
Time: 9:34:00 PM
User: KBOMB\administrator
Computer: ARIA
Description:
Windows cannot access the file gpt.ini for GPO CN={31B2F340-016D-11D2-945F-00C04FB984F9},CN=Policies,CN=System,DC=kbomb,DC=local. The file must be present at the location <\\kbomb.local\sysvol\kbomb.local\Policies\{31B2F340-016D-11D2-945F-00C04FB984F9}\gpt.ini>. (Configuration information could not be read from the domain controller, either because the machine is unavailable, or access has been denied. ). Group Policy processing aborted.



From research on the Internet this can be caused by many things.

In my case my windows 2008 server required SMB Signing. If I logged into a Windows XP workstation and navigated to \\domain.local\sysvol it asked me for username and password. If I navigated to any other share on the domain controllers it worked successfully.

I navigated to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanworkstation\parameters

enablesecuritysignature was set to 0... this means the workstation will never take part in signed SMB if the server requests it. I set this to "1" meaning my XP machine can talked signed SMB if my 2008 server requests it.

There is another setting, requiresecuritysignature. This should be set to 0. Setting this to 1 means if the PC at the other end does not support signed SMB it will not communicate.

After making the change I restarted the "workstation" and "server" services.

Ran another gpupdate /force after the change was made.



Fixed