Double vision...one GPO applying twice.

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We have a script which runs IE when a user logs in.

On our RDS servers we found that users were seeing two instances of IE opening.

This is caused by the User Group Policy loopback processing mode being enabled.

We need this mode enabled for various reasons so just turning this off wouldn't help.

The GPO applying the logon script needs to be on the root OU due to the design of AD.  Something which I wish to change but being relatively new here I am loathed to rock that boat...

Luckily I was able to change the loopback mode from merge to replace, in some cases this would lead to some hefty changes, but for us this worked!

A good explanation is here

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2013/02/08/circle-back-to-loopback.aspx

However the long and short is that:

  • In merge mode user policies which are in scope of the computer object are applied along with the policies within scope of the user object.  
  • In replace mode only the user policies in scope of the computer object are applied.

So in my case the Default Domain Policy is in scope of both the user and computer and was running twice in merge mode.

Sorted.

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