Group Policies give you more control over Windows, so you can tailor your experience to your liking. However, there are certain policies you need to avoid, and it can be difficult to locate them on your own. Fortunately, Microsoft has made it easy for Windows 10 and 11 administrators to identify these irrelevant policies by listing 25 of them.
25 Group Policies Microsoft Says You Should Avoid on Windows
In a blog post published on the Windows IT Pro Blog, Aria Carli from Microsoft outlined 25 Group Policies that you shouldn’t set if you’re an administrator on Windows 10 or 11.
Basically, while some Group Policies can improve your PC, Microsoft recommends avoiding these legacy policies as they can lead to unexpected behavior. Thus, they can negatively affect your Windows experience.
While the blog post mentioned above has all the details you need, including why Microsoft opposes these policies and what you should do or use instead, the author tweeted an overview.
Click on Computer Configuration and then go to Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update.
To make it easier for Windows 11 users, Microsoft has placed these policies to avoid in a subfolder called Legacy Policies.
Now You Know Which Group Policies Should Be Avoided in Windows 10 and 11
Microsoft is always improving Windows to give you the best experience possible. And they’ve discovered, after receiving feedback from the community, that some policies contribute nothing or even negatively affect your enjoyment of Windows. Take a look at the blog post and disable any legacy policies you may have set up.
Do you wish you could change some of the way Windows 10 behaves? You might want more control over certain features, or want to make changes that aren’t available in the Settings panel.
A great way to get more control over your computer is to use Group Policy. There are lots of useful Group Policy settings that home users can employ to change the way Windows 10 works. Let’s look at some of the best Group Policy settings to improve your system.
Group Policy provides a centralized way to configure and apply all kinds of settings to computers on an Active Directory network. These settings are maintained by a domain controller and individual computers cannot override them.
Thus, Group Policy on Windows domains is most common in business settings. However, computers that are not on an Active Directory network (meaning most home machines) can still fine-tune their settings locally using the Local Group Policy Editor.
Think of it like a control panel, except a lot more powerful. With Group Policy, you can restrict access to certain parts of the system, force a certain home page for all users, and even set certain settings whenever a computer is started or shut down. Can also run scripts.
Behind the scenes, most of the options in the Group Policy Editor simply make changes to the Windows Registry. However, the Group Policy Editor provides a friendlier interface for managing these options without having to manually scour the registry.
One downside is that by default, Group Policy is only available for computers running Professional or higher versions of Windows. If you’re on Windows Home, this omission might persuade you to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro—though there is a workaround which we’re mentioning below.