[German]Brief information for administrators of Windows systems. Microsoft announced on March 4, 2026, that it had improved Windows Server 2025 and Windows 11 24H2 with regard to GPP (Group Policy Preferences) diagnostics. With the January 2026 updates, the event viewer provides significantly more information for entries in Windows 11—this feature is expected to follow later for Windows Server 2025.
Group Policies Preferences (GPP) shave always been a powerful tool for managing files, folders, drive mappings, registry, local users and groups, and much more, Microsoft argues. Microsoft has published a support document on the topic of Group Policy preferences.
Guesswork for GPP error diagnosis
In the past, the problem with diagnosing GPP errors was that there was little information available in the event log. There was only event ID 4098 with an error code. Neither an object name nor a path was specified; there was simply no indication of which GPP setting element had failed. Administrators could try to find out more using the debugging function or ProcMon, but they often had to rely on guesswork.
GPP error diagnosis has been improved
With the January 2026 update rollup, Microsoft developers have now implemented significantly more comprehensive diagnostic functions for group policy preferences in Windows 11 24H2 and 25 H2. It is not yet known when the same will be implemented for Windows Server 2025.
The Active Directory Service Team announced this on March 4, 2026, in the Techcommunity blog post From Guesswork to Clarity: GPP Diagnostics Improve in Windows Server 2025 and Windows 11 24H2 (via).
There is now a new event with Event ID 4117 (Group Policy Preferences Diagnostic Data). This Event ID 4117 is logged in addition to the old event entries (e.g., Event ID 4098). The old event entries are retained for compatibility reasons. The following screenshot shows the (old) event entry for Event 4098 when a file is missing.
The new event 4117 now provides the missing context that administrators need for troubleshooting. Below is the entry for event 4117 with detailed information about which file was not found.
Microsoft has provided various examples of old and new event entries in its TechCommunity post. The following table lists the old event IDs that exist for GPP diagnostics and the new additions for ID 4117.
The Microsoft team writes that event ID 4117 finally provides the information needed to diagnose errors in Group Policy preferences and brings everything up to date. Microsoft plans to update the post once these additions have been integrated into Windows Server 2025. Question for administrators: Is this really as big a step forward as Microsoft claims? Or does no administrator actually use this in practice anyway?
