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Comment on Windows: we noticed that you kept the useless search bar disabled since 2015, so we sent an update that re-enabled it without your permission

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lud@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Please explain why that’s a reasonable thing to do if that is actually what OP did. If OP applied the GPO to all or many users that’s fine, but IMO it’s weird to force these kinds of changes on users unless many complain. In my experience most actually like a colossal search bar for some reason.

If OP uses a GPO as their personal config, that can’t be how they are supposed to be used. But maybe that’s really common, sounds pretty odd though. (I don’t think OP actually did this, the first option seems more likely and my comment above was mostly a joke).

Either way, OP should troubleshoot their GPOs before complaining about it.

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TeddE@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I work at a Managed Service Provider for IT and we have a ton of GPO policies that are labeled “VIP”, which is internally understood as ‘there’s no reason for this policy to exist except that someone in power demanded we create it’. Many of those policies are dialed down to a single or small handful of people.

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- lud@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Well, that sucks.
  
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ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨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 from moving away from default home configs, more power to them I say.

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

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- lud@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Microsoft has restricted normal GPOs to Pro and up, because the Home edition can’t join a domain. They also restricted local group policies but I don’t think they are used much (as it should be).
  
  OP said that they were in a domain so they are probably using normal GPOs with AD anyways.
  
  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 using GPO to hack his home machine, lol.
  
  No, absolutely not. I just thought it was on a corporate domain joined computer. OP can do whatever they want on their own machine.
  
  Btw, GPOs just edit the windows register so you could just apply all the changes using regedit instead of using a GPO. This should also work on Home (I haven’t tried but I see no reason why it wouldn’t work). But please don’t, you will have a bad time if you do anything remotely complicated.
  
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  - ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    GPOs just edit the windows register so you could just apply all the changes using regedit instead of using a GPO.
    
    No. Because GPO involves differing rights as well as registry hacks, and because GPO allows you to change certain settings that are not in the registry at all, there are some things you can literally ONLY do via GPO. It’s been a while, but I’ve spent multiple hours trying on a few occasions when the situation demanded it, and ended up either installing Pro with GPO or abandoning the effort altogether.
    
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