Tag: group policy client

I really hate Windows (Unable to start Group Policy Client)

I’m sitting and installing updates on my girlfriends Windows 7 laptop. After the installation is finished and the computer restarts the first time; enter blue screen of death. Fair enough, it is what windows does. I restart it a second time and it boots without problem, except that it is not possible to login with any user that does not have administrator privileges. I spend the whole evening trying to find a solution for the problem, without any initial success.

Gave it another shot the day after, searching for solutions, and I actually found one! I’d say it looks a bit magical, but it works. However, it says a lot about windows and specially the windows register!

  1. Open regedit
  2. Find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services. This path must contain a key with the name gpsvc, in my case it was intact, but double check that it truly exist. If it does not exist, you might get some guidance here [batcmd.com]
  3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Svchost, this is the most important path since it must contain the keys and values in step 2.
  4. Make sure that the key above has a multi-string key that is named GPSvcGroup where the value is GPSvc
  5. Make sure that the key in step 3 has a sub-key named GPSvcGroup
  6. This key should have two DWORD (32-bit) values:
  • AuthenticationCapabilities with the value 0x00003020 (12320 decimal)
  • CoInitializeSecurityParam with the value 1

When above steps are finished, just reboot the computer and hopefully you’ll be able to login with non-administrator users again.

A big thank you to SQL-ER [microsoft.com] on the Windows 7 technet forum [microsoft.com] that provided the fix.