How-To: Use the Local Group Policy Editor to Tweak Windows

Posted 10/07/2009 at 9:00am | by Alex Castle

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Microsoft has a penchant for hiding some of the strongest, most versatile tools for managing their operating system in places you’d never find by yourself. Given that the average computer user is pretty dumb, this makes sense

—some of the tools can easily screw up your computer pretty badly. But you, Maximum PC reader, are not one of the clueless masses, so we’re going to trust you with this: The Local Group Policy Editor.

In this article, we’ll show you how to use the Local Group Policy Editor to tweak every aspect of your PC. We’ll also show you how to use Multiple Local Group Policy Objects on a Windows Vista or 7 computer to create different policies for different user accounts, allowing you to create an account just for guests, or for the kids.

Making a system restore point

The Local Group Policy Editor is a powerful tool, capable of putting a lock on nearly any of your computer’s capabilities. Now, as long as you’re careful and don’t go flipping virtual switches all willy-nilly, you should be able to prevent doing catastrophic damage to your operating system. But just in case, now would be a great time to create a system restore point.

Launching the Local Group Policy Editor

As a high-expertise tool, you won’t find the Local Group Policy Editor anywhere in your system’s control panel. Instead, open the Run dialogue box from the start menu, type gpedit.msc and hit enter. The Local Group Policy Editor will open.

At first glance, the Group Policy Window looks like a standard file explorer, with a tree view on the left side and folder view on the right. At the bottom of the right-hand section of the window, there are two tabs. If this is the first time you’ve opened the Group Policy Editor, the Standard tab should be selected. Click on the Extended tab.

Now, you should see a third element in the middle of the window. This will give you (semi) detailed information about any policy or folder that you click on. Since there’s thousands of policy options in the editor, these explanations are a must. Also, the information panel tells you for which versions of Windows that policy has an effect.

Where to look

With thousands upon thousands of settings in the group policy editor, it can be a little intimidating to try and look around. Some sections of the editor have more meat to them than others, though. For instance, for most of the Windows tweaks you might want to perform, User Configuration has more useful setting than Computer Configuration. Also, In either section, the Administrative Templates subsection is the most useful. This section contains all the registry-based settings, which will allow you to tweak aspects of how Windows looks and operates.