i know i cant be the only one that has ever been looking for a solution to managing power management through AD, and when i finally found an easy way to do it, i just had to make sure i posted it and let everyone else that might be looking know, it is possible.
i have included the background portion of the article to give you an idea of where they are coming from:
"EZ_GPO is a tool for network administrators who manage Windows client workstations using Group Policy Objects under Active Directory, Novell NDS/Zenworks or any other client registry management system. It gives centralized control to network administrators over the user's power management settings. Due to the designs of Microsoft's implementation of power management, this is impossible using normal techniques.
Although implementing MPM through GPOs should be straight forward since MPM uses the registry to store settings, the reality is far different. Using Microsoft's Native GPO feature in Active Directory to manage power management directly is not possible, because there is a limitation in the Administrative Templates Meta language (ADM) used to create the interface for custom Group Policies. Only two types of keys can be changed through the ADM interface to the GPO tree: single value strings and dword (integer) values. Binary keys are the storage of choice for power management settings and this limitation is one reason why an interface for handling power management settings is not provided. Additionally, changing this binary key using the same copy for each computer on the network will cause problems on heterogeneous networks with multiple Windows versions, as the binary strings used to store the power management settings are OS and machine dependent. This is despite being housed in the user portion of the registry and therefore being user based.
It is with this knowledge that EZ GPO was created to help administrators work around this in the most unobtrusive manner possible. EZ GPO is available for download at ( and is open source under a BSD style license. The use of this license style allows all stakeholders to be equal beneficiaries of the knowledge and efforts of this open source project.
Basically, how this application works is there is a small client install of a binary application (user executed) and a service application (machine system account executed). The service is a standard Microsoft Windows service and controls the power management settings of the machine when users are not logged in. The user executed binary is executed via the local machine run entry by each user to login to the client machine at login time and is responsible for all changes to the user's portion of the registry. Both of these applications look for GPOs that are set by AD via the enclosed ADM template, alternatively (ex: if GPO's are not found), they look for registry entries set in the software branch (LM and CU respectively) that can be set using zenworks, or via any method that allows an admin to set client registry entries remotely.
These GPOs/Registry Entries are in integer and string value format and then, using Microsoft's core API, the appropriate changes to the PM settings, which will be available immediately thereafter. There is no threat of a race condition (ie; the binary executing before the policies are set) since GPOs are applied immediately after authentication whilst the run list is processed well after user services have initialized and are running."
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention
of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body,
but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up,
totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
--"WOW-- What a Ride!"
