With a new version of Windows comes its own set of administrative templates. With the recent release of Windows 10 v20H2, its Administrative templates are also available to download and install, just like for the previous version Windows 10 v2004.
Administrative templates install pre-configured options in the Group Policy Editor, making it easier to manage group policies. Any changes made to the Group Policy can always be managed through the Windows Registry Editor. However, it is not always safe to meddle around with the registries. Any configurations made in the Group Policy Editor can always be reverted without having severe effects on the OS.
Table of Contents
What’s new in Administrative Templates for Windows 10 October 2020 Update
The following Group Policy settings have been added in these ADMX templates.
- Allow Update Compliance Processing
Path:Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>Windows Components\Data Collection and Preview Builds - Allow Desktop Analytics Processing
Path:Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Data Collection and Preview Builds. - Allow WUfB Cloud Processing
Path:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection - Configure the inclusion of Edge tabs into Alt-Tab
Path:Settings -> System -> Multitasking - Turn off cloud-optimized content
Path:Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Cloud Content -> Turn off cloud-optimized content - Microsoft Defender Antivirus: Block at First Sight (BAFS)
Path:Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Microsoft Defender Antivirus\ - Microsoft Defender Antivirus: 2 new Attack surface reduction rules
- Use advanced protection against ransomware
- Block persistence through WMI event subscription
Path:Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Microsoft Defender Antivirus\Microsoft Defender Exploit Guard\Attack Surface Reduction\Configure Attack Surface Reduction rules
- UEFI Memory Attributes Table (MAT)
Path:Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Device Guard\Turn on Virtualization Based Security\Require UEFI Memory Attributes Table
Installing Windows 10 Version 20H2 administrative templates will add these policies to Windows 10 Group Policy.
You can download the complete Group Policy reference from here, or read about the new features here.
Download and install Administrative Templates for Windows 10 v20H2
There is no need to uninstall any previous versions of admx files already installed. Simply downloading and installing the new admx file will work.
Follow the guide below to download and install the Administrative templates for 20H2:
- Download the Administrative Templates for Windows 10 v20H2 [Size: 12.9 MB].
You may also download Microsoft Security Compliance Toolkit that gives security administrators the ability to apply Group Policy Objects via a Domain Controller throughout an enterprise network - Run the downloaded .msi package.
- On the installation wizard’s welcome screen, click on Next.
- On the next screen, accept the terms by checking the box and click Next.
- Now select the installation location (which can be left in default settings) and click Next.
- On the confirmation screen, click Install.
You have now successfully installed the Administrative templates for Windows 10 20H2. You can also change the language when downloading the MSI file. The following languages are available:
- cs-CZ Czech – Czech Republic
- da-DK Danish – Denmark
- de-DE German – Germany
- el-GR Greek – Greece
- en-US English – United States
- es-ES Spanish – Spain
- fi-FL Finnish – Finland
- fr-FR French – France
- hu-HU Hungarian – Hungary
- it-IT Italian – Italy
- ja-JP Japanese – Japan
- ko-KR Korean – Korea
- nb-NO Norwegian (Bokmål) – Norway
- nl-NL Dutch – The Netherlands
- pl-PL Polish – Poland
- pt-BR Portuguese – Brazil
- pt-PT Portuguese – Portugal
- ru-RU Russian – Russia
- sv-SE Swedish – Sweden
- tr-TR Turkish – Turkey
- zh-CN Chinese – China
- zh-TW Chinese – Taiwan
Head over to Microsoft’s download center to get more information about the 20H2 Administrative Templates.
Closing words
Pre-configured Group Policies can help manage them on your computer. The more options a user has to control, the more features they can manage. However, this also adds to the complexity of the configurations.
If you are running the Home edition of Windows 10, you can also use this guide to enable the Group Policy Editor on your OS.
