How do I open Group Policy management?

Group Policy Management is a feature reserved for the Professional, Enterprise, and Education editions of Windows. But with a few tweaks, Home users can enable the Local Group Policy Editor, or you can use a third-party tool to access a more comprehensive collection of settings. We show you both options.

Update: Recent versions of Windows 10 have decoupled settings available in the Local Group Policy Editor in Windows 10 Home. You might still see the all settings mentioned below, but changing them might not have an effect on your system.

How to Open the Local Group Policy Editor

You can access the Local Group Policy Editor in several ways.

Here are the two most convenient ones:

1. Press Win + R to open the Run menu, enter gpedit.msc, and hit Enter to launch the Local Group Policy Editor.
2. Press Win to open the search bar or, if you're using Windows 10, press Win + Q to summon Cortana, enter gpedit.msc, and open the respective result.

If this doesn't work, you either don't have Administrator privileges, or you're running Windows Home and don't have access to the Local Group Policy Editor.

Fortunately, you don't have to upgrade to the Pro edition of Windows to tweak group policies. We explain how to enable the Local Group Policy Editor on Windows Home below, but we recommend checking out the following third-party tool first.

How to Configure Windows Settings Without the Group Policy Editor

Before you try to enable the Local Group Policy Editor, consider using a more convenient and more powerful alternative. Policy Plus is an open-source tool that gives you access to settings in the Group Policy Editor and the Windows Registry.

Policy Plus is compatible with all Windows editions. It requires .NET Framework version 4.5 or up. We recommend installing the more stable Release build. Once installed, go to Help > Acquire ADMX Files, double-check the destination folder, and click Begin to download additional administrative templates.

If you've ever dabbled with the native Windows Group Policy Editor, the interface of Policy Plus will look familiar. The categories in the left-hand column, however, follow a slightly different logic that we find easier to navigate.

If you're using the Windows Home edition, switch to see settings in the Computer category only, since your system will ignore changes to per-user Group Policy Objects; you'll need to make those changes in the Windows Registry instead.

Changing the settings works just like it does in the Group Policy Editor; more on that below. Note that if you're using Windows Home, you'll have to restart or log off and back on to activate changes.

How to Enable the Local Group Policy Editor in Windows Home

Whether you're on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8.1, or Windows 10 Home, you can enable the Group Policy Editor using one of the two solutions below.

Solution 1: Use the Add GPEDIT.msc Installer

The proper installation with this tool requires a couple of tweaks and .NET Framework version 3.5 or higher.

First, head to C:\Windows\SysWOW64 and copy these items:

• GroupPolicy folder
• GroupPolicyUsers folder
• gpedit.msc file

Then open C:\Windows\System32 and paste the items you just copied.

Now download the Add GPEDIT.msc ZIP file from DeviantArt user Drudger and install it on your computer. You will need a DevianArt account.

Following the installation, you will find the tool under C:\Windows\Temp\gpedit. You might have to manually navigate to that folder.

If your Windows username contains more than one word, you might have to adjust your installation. Right-click x64.bat or x86.bat, depending on whether your system is 64-bit or 32-bit, and select Open with... > Notepad or Edit (Windows 10). Add quotes to the six instances of %username%, i.e., change %username% to "%username%", save your changes, then right-click the BAT file again, and select Run as administrator.

If you continue to get the "MMC could not create snap-in" error, try replacing "%username%" with "%userdomain%\%username%".

Solution 2: Use the GPEDIT Enabler BAT

If you can't find a gpedit.msc file on your system, or if the previous method didn't work, try this.

Open Notepad, enter the code below, and save the file as Enabler.bat.

 @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 Then right-click the BAT file you just created and select Run as administrator. A command window will open, and the BAT file will run through several installations. Wait until you see Press any key to continue at the bottom; doing so will close the command window.

Now try to open gpedit.msc as described above. If you can't find gpedit.msc using the search, be sure to try opening it using the Run window.

Courtesy to ITECHTICS for pointing us to this method.

How to Change Group Policy Editor Settings

Now that you can access the Local Group Policy Editor, what are you going to do with it?

The number of settings available in the Group Policy Editor has been shrinking, and things you used to be able to do now require a registry tweak. But you can still discover a few gems, and we'll show you how.

Inside the Group Policy Editor, you can find settings affecting the Computer Configuration or the User Configuration and three sub-categories for each of them. Browse the Administrative Templates to discover the most interesting settings.

Change Windows Update Settings

Let's have a look at Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update, everyone's most favorite Windows feature. You'll find that most of the settings here are Not configured.

To change one of the settings, for example, to Configure Automatic Updates, double-click the item, then review the available settings in the properties window that pops up, and change them to your preferences. In this example, you could change the setting to Enabled, then choose option 3 - Windows Auto download and notify for install, followed by your preferred installation day and time. When you're done, click Apply.

The Group Policy Editor also offers settings to pause or stop Windows Update and ways to control Driver Updates in Windows 10.

Adjust Windows Installer Defaults

Are you sharing your computer with others and wand to prevent them from installing software? Head to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Installer > Disable Windows Installer** and enable this option for non-managed apps only or always.

Other Windows Installer-related settings you can activate include:

• Always install with elevated privileges
• Prohibit rollback or patching
• Logging
• Prohibit User Installs
• Prohibit removal of updates

Be sure to read the description for each to understand what each setting does. Keep in mind that settings applied within Computer Configuration apply to all users. If you want to limit only specific users, switch to the User Configuration track instead.

Level Up With Windows Group Policy

The Group Policy Editor is a treasure trove of powerful Windows settings. While its importance has declined since the introduction of Windows 10 and will further lose importance when Windows 11 launches, it still offers many ways to customize your Windows setup. And now Home users have access to these settings, too.