15 replies to this topic

[manicd]

Hi,

 

I have a little laptop running Win 8.1-BING. I'm aware that both Gpedit & Secpol are unavailable on this version of windows;

 

Are there freeware alternatives that can perform the same tasks?

Thank you

[Satchfan]

See this.

[manicd]

Hey Satchfan,

 

I have already perused this article.   

 

Like I said I neither Gpedit or Secpol are available. I can't even add the 'Manage Local Users and Groups' Snap-In via MMConsole.

 

Are you a Liverpudlian by any chance?

[Satchfan]

Are you a Liverpudlian by any chance?

 

 

The biggest!!!!!

[Satchfan]

BTW, I won't insult your knowledge/intelligence by pointing you to other sites I've Googled with the same problem.

 

I have an 8.1 but still using 7 at the moment cos I'm too comfortable with it and don't have time to transfer everything. I will look into your situation on my 8.1 as soon as I have time and if I have anything to report, will post it here.

[manicd]

The biggest!!!!!

You'll never walk alone

 

BTW, I won't insult your knowledge/intelligence by pointing you to other sites I've Googled with the same problem.
 
I have an 8.1 but still using 7 at the moment cos I'm too comfortable with it and don't have time to transfer everything. I will look into your situation on my 8.1 as soon as I have time and if I have anything to report, will post it here.

Not at all. Please let me know If you happen to stumble upon anything.

Thanks again

[Satchfan]

You'll never walk alone

 

 

Please let me know If you happen to stumble upon anything.

 

 

Will do.

[appleoddity]

I'm not sure what your specific purpose of these tools are.  But, a little trick I learned in the past is that group policy settings usually just map to registry settings that need to be changed.  

 

You can download the .admx files from Microsoft for Windows 8.1 / 2012R2 and if you open the file up in a text editor you can cross-reference the policy with whatever changes that policy makes on the computer.  In a limited fashion, you could easily tweak a few settings in the registry to accomplish the same thing.

 

There are also lists like this: http://www.williamst...ProgReg_Ref.pdf

Here is a Microsoft list: https://msdn.microso...y/ms815238.aspx

 

It gives you a nice list of policies mapped to registry settings.

[Ztruker]

Ken, it looks like you have to install the Administrative Templates (.admx) for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 , before you can look at them, true?
 
The other links are great, thanks.

[appleoddity]

Well, yes and no.  You download them in a fancy .MSI file which does have to be installed, but all it does is decompress the files to a folder of your choice.  It also shows up in add / remove programs.

 

The files are just simple XML formatted files.  You can use a program like XML Notepad to navigate through them easily.  You are interested in the .admx files.  Unfortunately, they are broken up into many files but based on the name you can get a good idea of what they do.

 

Here's an example of a policy to disable lock screen notifications in Windows 8:

 

You'll see that it shows the registry key and value for enabled / disabled.

 

I'm actually surprised there isn't another open source product out there that will load these files in and just do this stuff for you.  Maybe there is.  Seems like I saw something like that years ago.

[Ztruker]

Thanks. I was leery of installing it as I didn't know what would happen.

This new laptop I picked up cheap has 8.1 Core, not Pro so no gpedit. This info will come in handy for sure.

[Ztruker]

Hmmm, installed and ended up with German, not English, even though English was selected when I did the download.

 

ID10T error!!!!

 

I was looking in the de-de folder

en-en is just fine English

Edited by Ztruker, 09 February 2015 - 11:18 AM.

[appleoddity]

Those are the language files.  Those contain the descriptions of the policies.  The policies themselves are in the root folder and have a .admx extension.  The policies in the .admx file reference "strings" in the language files so that depending on what language your operating system is in it can show you the right language in the group policy editor.  The underlying policy and registry settings don't change from language to language.

[manicd]

I was looking in the de-de folder

en-en is just fine English

 de-de en-en

This is brilliant and of course appreciated. I'm going to mull through the information & see if I can make sense of it.

 

What I'm trying to do is restrict one users access to the control panel. If any changes are made do they affect all user accounts?

[appleoddity]

 

What I'm trying to do is restrict one users access to the control panel. If any changes are made do they affect all user accounts?

 

 

I'll have to get back with you with more details on this.  I've never done much with this information even though I have it.

 

I do know that some policies are user policies and some are computer policies.  Sometimes there is a user version and a computer version.  Usually computer policies will be added somewhere under HKLM and user policies will be added somewhere under the specific user's HKCU.  Computer policies affect all users.   In the past, however, I have wondered what prevents the user from just going into HKCU and changing the policy seems how they have write access to this area.  I suspect the user could change it but it would be reapplied automatically if you were actually using GPOs.  But, now I'm curious enough to find out.

 

I'm pretty sure what you are suggesting is a user policy that you will add under that user's registry hive.  I imagine changing permissions on the key could prevent the user from changing it, and I suspect that is going to be the answer I find for a scenario like this.  i.e. You'll add the policy under HKCU then change permissions on that key so that only admins and system have write access. 

 

Just so I'm not leading you astray, I want to make sure you understand that if you open up registry editor and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER you are looking at the currently logged on user registry hive.  Other user's registry hives are found under HKEY_USERS referenced by SID.  You can reference a list of SIDs for each user by looking in the registry here: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList