Windows 10 Group Policies

[TeeEmDee]

Hello,

I've recently noticed that there are a lot of group policies set on my personal pc that only I use at home. I don't know why this is as I don't remember ever setting anything like that. I've tried many different suggestions on different forums but nothing seemed to work, and now I cannot access any of the group policy editors with the error message 'MMC could not create the snap-in.'. My account has administrator and I even made a second account on my pc and set it as administrator to see if that would help. I started with Windows 10 Home but upgraded to Windows 10 Pro (unactivated) shortly after because I thought maybe that would fix it. Please help I can't even access the Microsoft Store without it telling me that the group policies are preventing it!

 

[TeeEmDee]

anyone?

 

[TeeEmDee]

If you can't access gpedit.msc anymore then you might get away with deleting the contents of C:\Windows\System32\GroupPolicy and then running gpupdate /force from an admin command prompt.

You can't apply policies with Home editions of Windows, and to be honest if you don't know how these became configured it's probably best to do a clean install. A clean install of Professional will not have any local policies configured.

I deleted the contents and then tried to run that command and it says 'gpupdate is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file'

 

[TeeEmDee]

Microsoft Teams does this - copies group policies over from a Teams domain host!

I deleted group policy folder as mentioned above but never found a permanent fix to them being applied at home.

ah that's annoying I need teams - what do you mean by never found a permanent fix, what did deleting the folder do?

 

[TeeEmDee]

You might be best just formatting the pc, restoring it back to factory settings rather than mess about with why something isn't working.

I've been considering this but I really don't want to have to do it

 

[TeeEmDee]

You might not have a choice if it's not repairable. You might be able to fix it by running a 20H2 install over the top as an upgrade. Have you done sfc /scannow by command line as well? which might also fix it.

I have thanks

 

[TeeEmDee]

in which case activating would fix the issue, Group policy is blocked by unlicensed version of Windows.

Group policy is only avaliable to Pro version & its the license that gives you the extra features Home/Pro install is identical.

ah so I have to activate? I thought that could be the case and I could activate it easily enough

 

[TeeEmDee]

Yeah that's not correct, sorry. The ISO for business editions of W10 is not the same as Home. You don't need to activate Win10 Pro to be able to use (or test) GPOs. He's upgraded to Pro, but hasn't activated it, but it's still Pro and therefore GPOs can be modified.

OPs, there's a PS script available on Technet as part of the W10 Security Baselines that will set all your GPOs back to day one. Probably a quick google will help you find it.

any ideas to what I should search/ how I should find it? I've done a quick search but I'm not really sure what exactly to look for.

 

[TeeEmDee]

Clean install is your only option.

Your post implies that after finding GPs enabled, you set about trying to fix it, via many suggestions on other forums - so there's a high probability that one of these things has impacted the o/s. That's how I read it anyway.

Assuming you're on W10, hold Shift when clicking reboot and pick the option to reset your PC - that will revert to a clean install of Windows. Think there's a restore in there too, so you can at least try that first. There will be guides online to help navigate the advanced startup area.

Regarding the GPs - I don't ever recall seeing anything changed from 'Not configured' out of the box, so don't understand why/how these might have changed, but that's by the by now.

Thanks, I'll try this tomorrow

 

[TeeEmDee]

Clean install is your only option.

Your post implies that after finding GPs enabled, you set about trying to fix it, via many suggestions on other forums - so there's a high probability that one of these things has impacted the o/s. That's how I read it anyway.

Assuming you're on W10, hold Shift when clicking reboot and pick the option to reset your PC - that will revert to a clean install of Windows. Think there's a restore in there too, so you can at least try that first. There will be guides online to help navigate the advanced startup area.

Regarding the GPs - I don't ever recall seeing anything changed from 'Not configured' out of the box, so don't understand why/how these might have changed, but that's by the by now.

Just had a look at settings and this shows up.

https://imgur.com/a/ISrA6SL

 

[TeeEmDee]

Those aren't group policies they are Windows Update MDM policies. You've probably done an Azure AD join; in Settings -> Accounts -> Access work or school is anything listed there. If it is then removing it should remove those policies; obviously removing it will remove your access to whatever account you've signed in to.

Just had a look in settings and it wouldn't let me reset to a previous windows update, so I tried removing my school/workplace account and restarted my PC and it seems that everything is fixed! Will I still be able to access programs such as Microsoft Teams without this happening again?