FAQShop.com : User Configuration Group Policies Being Ignored in SUS SP1

User Configuration Group Policies Being Ignored in SUS SP1

I'm currently testing/ evaluating SUS with SP1 for my organization, and I'm having a lot of trouble with the Group Policy. I'm using the updated WUAU.ADM template which works fine, but it's the other GP settings that relate to Windows update that have me dumbfounded (my test clients are Windows XP with SP1). Particularly this one:

Local Computer Policy\User Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Windows Automatic Updates

If you ENABLE this setting, it prohibits Windows from searching for updates. So if you're looking at this in the GP settings list for System, it looks like:
Windows Automatic Updates ...........................................Enabled

even though this really means it's being prohibited, but...

no matter whether I enable, disable, or leave it as not configured, the Automatic Updates service will consistently retrieve and download new updates. Why isn't the AU service listening to Group Policy? or is that whole WAU setting bunk?

Contributed by DrC on the SUS Forum
The policy that you are referring to in the User Configuration section is completely ignored by the Automatic Update client now. It *was* a valid policy when Windows XP shipped, and is still respected by the version of Automatic Update that shipped with Windows XP "Gold" (non-SP edition).

When Microsoft developed SUS and decided to use the Automatic Update client to communicate to the SUS server, they had to do some extensive modifications, and one of those mods included making Automatic Update respect new computers policies (the ones in 'WUAU.ADM') versus the previous user policies. Hope that clears things up!