Windows 2008 R2 Group Policy Preferences Do Not Apply

I have been writing some new group policies and using the features of Preferences only to find that they were not applying to the Windows 2003 R2 servers on the domain. After some testing, investigation and Googling it was found that a Microsoft Patch for Client Side Extensions needed to be installed on each server/PC that would require the use of the Preferences in the policies.

The following needs to be installed on each machine that will have the Preferences applied to them:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943729

Download the correct version and install it. From my installations I found a reboot was not required and that on logon the policy Preferences applied straight away.

These patches can be added by group policy also, speeding up the installation.

Xmllite also needs to be present and should it be required on your machine the links for download are at the bottom of the Microsoft article.