Windows Tutorials

How to remove domain group policy from a windows computer

Domain group policies are a set of software restrictions that network administrators can create. The network administrators will specify rules for what users can and cannot do on the computer. For example, they can set a rule to make sure that people use complex passwords. Domain group policies help ensure that network administrators are the only ones who can modify computer settings in order to keep all of the company’s equipment under one specific standard.

This tutorial will show you how to solve an issue that occurs when older domain based group policy’s don’t remove themselves and still cause problems with your desktop. For example, if you delete a printer from the Group Policy Server and refresh it and then try to manually remove it from the desktop, it keeps coming back even after successfully running gpupdate /force on the desktop. This is because the desktop is having an issue cleaning up its group policy on the desktop.

Step 1

In this step, you will export the registry. First, click on “Start” and type “regedit.” Press “Enter” to open the registry editor. Then, right-click on Computer at the top and select “Export.” Depending on how many registry keys you have, this may take a few minutes. Save the backup that you created to a removable storage device in the event that you need to access it.

Step 2

Click on “Start,” type “regedit” in the search box and press “Enter.” Click the arrow next to the primary registry key labeled “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE” to expand the registry key and take the following path:

  • \SOFTWARE\Policies\

Right click and Delete the Policies folder.

 

Step 3

Click on “Start,” type “regedit” in the search box and press “Enter.” Click the arrow next to the primary registry key labeled “HKEY_CURRENT_USER” to expand the registry key and take the following path:

  • \SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft

Right click and Delete the Microsoft folder.

Step 4

Now reboot your computer and run gpupdate /force and verify that all the correct policies are in place.

I hope this article was helpful, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. If you would like to be notified of when I create a new post, you can subscribe to my blog alert.

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