Unable to restore a backup GPO in Active Directory

Question

I have only recently downloaded the Microsoft Security Compliance Manager and created several "profiles" and exported them as "GPO Backup (folder). No problems there.. Now I have copied the folders over to a WS 2003 DC and gone into GPMC and right hand clicked on "Group Policy Objects" (as shown in the screenshot) and selected "Manage Backups..." I then proceed by attempting to point the folder selector to the the folders on my desktop containing the group policy backups, although they do not show up in the folder selector as seen on the screenshot below, I am slightly confused, I can only assume that the folders are purposely not showing up?

Solution

Not sure why they don't show up there but you can do it another way that works. Instead of restoring the GPO, create a new empty GPO then right-click on it and choose import settings. The backup that you exported from SCM will show up here and you can import all the settings to the new GPO.

Comments

[Mike]

Thanks, funnily enough I tried this myself a few hours after and seemed to work! But thank you for your answer!

[Mike]

Also a tip for anyone else: Do not change the generated filenames for the gpo backup folders, as the import wizard will not pick them up (as seen in Screen2)