ChunkMcHorkle, 8 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

If OP uses a GPO as their personal config, that can’t be how they are supposed to be used.

“Supposed to” doesn’t matter at all in this context. The point and the utility of GPO on Windows Pro is that it allows admins much more granular control of a workstation, AND an admin can override rights limitations that are built into Windows Home simply because Microsoft doesn’t like home users tinkering with the OS, but accepts that business environments often require it for security or legacy software reasons.

Thus Microsoft has restricted GPO to Pro versions of the Windows OS, presuming that only business environments will elect to purchase it and GPO use will be restricted to experienced admins.

Because of this, there are things you can do with GPO on a Pro machine – combining elevated rights with granular settings – that you can’t even do with direct registry hacks on a Home machine. If OP fucks it up, they are the only ones who will suffer, but they also have the knowledge and ability to restore it to working condition (even if that means a reinstall). No harm, no foul.

And even if they don’t fuck it up, there is a non-zero chance that Microsoft will do it for them with one of their forced upgrades anyway.

This entire thread is about an unnecessary change Microsoft made to the LTSC (“long term servicing channel”) version of Windows: the whole point of LTSC is that it’s not supposed to change at all unless absolutely necessary, so that it remains stable for as many environments for as long as it can, reducing maintenance costs for businesses running it. Behold how easily and for what little payoff Microsoft shat on that too.

So if OP is running Windows Pro on a home machine and using GPO on a domain of one to override all the silly bullshit Microsoft has done to stop users moving away from default home configs, more power to them I say.

No puppies are being harmed by @Moonrise2473 using GPO to hack his home machine, lol.