GPOs not being applied on Windows 7 Home Premium?

[Nimroduk]

Hi everyone,

I've run into an issue that I cannot explain and I'm hoping someone out there will have some experience of this, as Google has nothing to offer !

We are a Workgroup and currently deploy machine level GPOs via LocalPol.exe for Chrome. The Chrome GPO works flawlessly across our mixed PC install base (XP Home, Pro, Win 7 Home Premium and Pro).

The problem I have is that I am now trying to deploy some Windows GPOs via the same mechanism but am getting mixed results. On XP Home, XP Pro and Win7 Pro the GPOs are imported and activated fine, however on Win7 home Premium the GPOs are imported but not activated; even after a gpupdate /force.

Any ideas other than not using Win 7 Home Premium in a business environment?

 

[cdogg]

Home versions of Windows do not come with the local group policy editor, so it doesn't surprise me that GPO's fail to activate. It may be working on XP Home, because Microsoft intentionally left some settings (mostly network) configurable by group policy. However, Windows 7 completely moved away with that for their Home version.

Your best bet is to manually configure the GPO settings in the registry. It's a bit tedious, but then again, you're only talking about one system. If it were me, I would export each setting I configure, just in case it's needed again at a later date. In fact, it would probably be smart to export the key before and after you modify it, so you have a record of what was changed.

-Carl
"The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it needs to be."

[tab][navy]For this site's posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[strongm]

http://www.askvg.com/how-to-enable-...home-premium-home-basic-and-starter-editions/

 

[cdogg]

strongm,
I came across that link earlier before I posted above, but since I haven't attempted to download from that link, I wasn't sure it could be trusted. Can you vouch that its safe and works?

 

[Nimroduk]

Thanks chaps,

FWIW I have already tried manually setting GPOs via a side-loaded GPEdit but they seem to be used by Windows either.

I have managed to get some of the Policies to activate by writing to the registry so I'm currently working down that path but it is rather annoying having to go backwards to support a newer OS !

 

[cdogg]

That's just it. They (meaning Microsoft) don't want businesses supporting the non-business versions of Windows. They stop just short of making it impossible, but "tough" and "annoying" is intentional!