I have two servers ServerA and ServerB. Both on the domain and in the same OU. When I login to ServerA with my account it allows me to modify the hosts file with any issues. When I login to ServerB with my account it does not allow me to save changes to Hosts files. It gives me an Access is Denied error and asks me to save it to a different location. As both servers were built at the same time, I am stuggling to find out why it is different using the same logon. I have checked the following. a) Servers in same OU, get the group policy updated as configured in AD. b) Permissions on the hosts files is the same for both servers. Inherited from parent drivers\etc\ folder. c) UAC is enabled on both servers. When I run notepad as administrator or ServerB and make changes to Hosts files, it allows me. But not as my regular userid. But on ServerA this is not required, it saves changes without any errors. d) The local policies are the same i think as they were built at the same time. Not sure how to chck this though. This is a strange issue. Please assist if you are aware of something similar.

check the ownership of hosts file on both Server A & B and compare them. Do you have Administrator rights on Server B ? If yes, and still facing the issue then, take ownership of hosts file on Server B and it will let you to save the changes with your user ID itself.

I have admin rights on both servers. The permissions are the same for both servers. I can take ownership of hosts file on serverB and modify it manually. The issue is not modifying the file, I can do this with running notepad as administartor. I am trying to indentify which server is broken. Is there anything different different between serverA and serverB as both servers should behave exactly the same as they are in the same OU. For example. When I try to runas command prompt in ServerA it does not prompt me for a password. But on ServerB it does. Just thinking is ServerA is broken instead of ServerB. UAC is enabled in AD so serverA should also prompt for UAC login when run as administrator. Is GPO or local security policy not getting applied properly to one of these two servers?

Why do you think either of your servers have been broken ? You said, on Server A, you are not seeing a prompt for password, there are chances that, UAC is completely turned off manually or modifying registry. To verify group policy propagation on both the servers, you can run a simple command (given below) on both the servers and compare the results. gpresult /H C:\result.html ( C:\result.html is just an example, you can mention any other drive letters as well )

Group policies are exactly the same on both server. I have run gpresult /H c:\temp\results.html. Compared and both are settings are the same for ServerA and ServerB. Group policy was applied to both servers in the past half hour. I have also checked in User Accounts - The Always Notify - for UAC is is selected for both servers. But for some reason, on ServerA when I run cmd.exe. It directly opens in Administrator mode instead of prompting for username/password. I feel serverA is broken because this is not normal behaviour, Is it missing a registry key or something?

But for some reason, on ServerA when I run cmd.exe. It directly opens in Administrator mode instead of prompting for username/password. I feel serverA is broken because this is not normal behaviour, Is it missing a registry key or something? I don't think so. Try running system file checker to see if any files have gone bad. run sfc /scannow from command prompt, if prompted provide OS installation files.

Trying to understand, UAC is enabled in ServerA, why it is not working as expected. I dont think the OS has corrupted.

Check the following ... Topic on UAC has been discussed in that thread, this may give you some more idea on how UAC works for both Admin and Standard users... http://www.vistax64.com/vista-security/73869-standard-user-needs-regedit-uac-prompt.html