XP Home edition & gpedit.msc

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Smith
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J

John Smith

I hava a friend running Windows XP Home edition with SP2 on a Dell
computer.
He has a situation where he has all the symptoms described in MS article
326686,
however when he tried to run gpedit.msc it doesn't start. A search of
the "C" partition does not find it (I tried it on my XP Pro machine and
found 4 files, 2 help files, a dll and a common console doc).

1. Could Dell have not installed the code or somehow it got deleted?
2. Would it be safe to copy the 4 files and put them in the same
directories, then
attemt to run gpedit?

Any help appreciated.
TIA, John
 
(e-mail address removed),
John Smith said:
I hava a friend running Windows XP Home edition with SP2 on
a Dell computer.
He has a situation where he has all the symptoms described
in MS article 326686,
however when he tried to run gpedit.msc it doesn't start. A
search of the "C" partition does not find it (I tried it on
my XP Pro machine and found 4 files, 2 help files, a dll and
a common console doc).

1. Could Dell have not installed the code or somehow it got
deleted?
2. Would it be safe to copy the 4 files and put them in the
same directories, then
attemt to run gpedit?

Any help appreciated.
TIA, John
Click to expand...

First off, is your friend logged on to his computer with an
account that is a Computer Administrator? A limited account
isn't allowed to run Windows Update.

As for your question about gpedit.msc, XP Home Edition does not
include the Group Policy or Local Security Policy features that
you find in XP Professional. It's not something that Dell
forgot to install. It's also not a feature you can add by
simply copying some files from your computer. There is,
however, a way to get around this.

Many of the settings that you can enable on your Pro system
through gpedit.msc can also be applied to XP Home through
editing the registry. Before you do so it's advisable to backup
the registry.

On your friends computer, go to Start -> Run and enter
regedit.exe in the Open box. Click OK. In the Registry Editor,
navigate to the following keys:

HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate
Delete this value from the right hand pane
DisableWindowsUpdateAccess

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
Delete this value from the right hand pane
NoWindowsUpdate

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\WindowsUpdate
Delete this value from the right hand pane
DisableWindowsUpdateAccess

If this doesn't solve the problem, you might want to post your
question to the Windows Update newsgroup.

Also, having Windows Update access disabled may be the result
of a virus or trojan that is present on your friend's computer.
Make sure he runs a scan with a reliable and updates AV
program.

Good luck

Nepatsfan
 
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