Group Policy Editor

Group Policy is a feature of the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems that controls the working environment of user accounts and computer accounts. Group Policy provides centralized management and configuration of operating systems, applications, and users’ settings in an Active Directory environment. A version of Group Policy called Local Group Policy (“LGPO” or “LocalGPO”) also allows Group Policy Object management on standalone and non-domain computers.

Windows 10 Home users don’t have access to the editor, running the batch file above will allow you to install the editor into Windows 10 Home.

Group Policy, in part, controls what users can and cannot do on a computer system: for example, to enforce a password complexity policy that prevents users from choosing an overly simple password, to allow or prevent unidentified users from remote computers to connect to a network share, to block access to the Windows Task Manager or to restrict access to certain folders. A set of such configurations is called a Group Policy Object (GPO).

As part of Microsoft’s IntelliMirror technologies, Group Policy aims to reduce the cost of supporting users. IntelliMirror technologies relate to the management of disconnected machines or roaming users and include roaming user profiles, folder redirection, and offline files.

Enforcement

To accomplish the goal of central management of a group of computers, machines should receive and enforce GPOs. A GPO that resides on a single machine only applies to that computer. To apply a GPO to a group of computers, Group Policy relies on Active Directory (or on third-party products like ZENworks Desktop Management) for distribution. Active Directory can distribute GPOs to computers which belong to a Windows domain.

By default, Microsoft Windows refreshes its policy settings every 90 minutes with a random 30 minutes offset. On Domain controllers, Microsoft Windows does so every five minutes. During the refresh, it discovers, fetches and applies all GPOs that apply to the machine and to logged-on users. Some settings – such as those for automated software installation, drive mappings, startup scripts or logon scripts – only apply during startup or user logon. Since Windows XP, users can manually initiate a refresh of the group policy by using the gpupdate command from a command prompt.

Download the Group Policy Editor

Otherwise, create a batch file and add the following:

@echo off
pushd “%~dp0″

dir /b %SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~3*.mum >List.txt
dir /b %SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~3*.mum >>List.txt

for /f %%i in (‘findstr /i . List.txt 2^>nul’) do dism /online /norestart /add-package:”%SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\%%i”
pause