How to copy local group policy objects from one machine to another?

Question

I have two Windows 7 Professional desktops. One has a set of local (no Domain Controller) group policy objects imposing restrictions on what programs can be run from that system. I need to copy all those GPOs to another local Windows 7 Pro machine. Is there any way to automate it?

Solution

I am going to copy the answer from the source in case it gets deleted or closed:

1.) Open %systemroot%\system32\grouppolicy\

Within this folder, there are two folders - machine and user. Copy these to folders to the %systemroot%\system32\grouppolicy - folder on the target machine. Restart the machine or run GPUPDATE /force

Note :- %systemroot%\system32\grouppolicy is a hidden folder. You need to enable viewing of hidden folders in explorer.

2) Use the Security Configuration Tool

Comments

[Erik]

On my system, these folders exist, but the files inside are very small, i.e. registry.pol only has 8 Bytes, so no reasonable content. The question is: if I want to store everything I can see in gpedit.msc (including all trees with all subfolders on the left side), how can all this be exported?