Undo Group Policy Restrictions on Windows 7
I recently did a restriction on one of the office laptops to try and limit the officers from using it as a multimedia system. I did this after noticing that staffs were using the machines to watch movies and play games. I did this by restricting programs using the group policy (gpedit.msc) which I found on How-to-Geek.
Unfortunately, I found it very difficult to remove this restriction afterwards. I found that I had unwittingly locked myself out. Every time I tried to access gpedit.msc or regedit, I was blocked out.
After much searching and experimenting I found the solution.
Firstly, logon into your local computer using safe mode. Then open the command line console (cmd) and type in the following commands:
del %systemroot%system32grouppolicy
del %systemroot%system32grouppolicyusers
Once you have done this, logoff and then logon again. You should now have full access again to gpedit.msc /regedit.
Alternatively, you can create a batch file using the code and then run it in safe mode.
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