Microsoft provides all kinds of customization options via its OS’ settings UI, but more advanced changes to your system can be made in the Local Group Policy Editor, also known as gpedit. The only problem is that gpedit isn’t the most intuitive app in the world. Mistakes are made and sometimes you need to reset a group policy in Windows 10.

Generally, there are two methods to reset Windows 10 group policies. One involves manually changing each via the usual editor, and the other lets you reset every group policy in one go via the command line.

It’s usually best to start with the first – disabling the most recent or potentially problematic policies. If that has no effect, you can clear them all with a command or switch each off in the policy editor. We’re going to show you how to do both in this tutorial, so let’s not delay:

How to reset all Local Group Policy settings in Windows 10 using Local Group Policy Editor

Group Policies in Windows 10 have three states: Enabled, Disabled, and Not configured. It’s the “Not configured” option that follows your system’s default state, and as a result, this is the best pick if you want to get your PC back to normal functioning.

That said, if you have a lot of group policies enabled or disabled, we do recommend using the command below instead. Manually changing many of them will be time-consuming.

  1. Open the Local Group Policy Editor


    Press the Start or Search button and type “gpedit.msc”. Click the top result to open the Local Group Policy Editor.

  2. Sort by enabled group policies


    You can very quickly find the group policies you have enabled by clicking the “State” column in the top-left of the main Group Policy Editor pane. Just make sure you’ve navigated to Computer Configuration> Administrative Templates > All Settings first or you may not see all of them.

    After clicking, you’ll see that each local group policy with the “Enabled” state will appear at the top of your list. Double-click one of them to open its settings.

  3. Change the Enabled Local Group Policy state to ‘Not Configured’


    In the resulting options menu, click the “Not Configured” checkbox, followed by “Apply” and “OK” to reset the group policy in Windows 10.

  4. Reset a disabled Local Group Policy setting


    To aid in troubleshooting, you may also want to reset group policies that you previously disabled. These should also show up under the “State” column once you’ve sorted them. Double click the policy to open it.

  5. Change the policy to ‘Not Configured’


    In the resulting options menu, tick “Not Configured”, then press “Apply” and “OK”. If you want to reset all of your policies, repeat this process for any that aren’t set to “Not Configured”.

How to Reset All Group Policy Settings via the Command Line

If you have a lot of group policies, the fastest way to reset them all is through command prompt, which allows you to do so in just a couple of commands.

  1. Open Command Prompt


    Press the Start button and type “Command Prompt”, then click “Run as administrator” on the right-hand side.

  2. Enter the reset group policy command


    To reset all group policy settings on Windows 10, we can enter the following command:

    RD /S /Q "%WinDir%\System32\GroupPolicyUsers" && RD /S /Q "%WinDir%\System32\GroupPolicy"

    You should leave it exactly as it is. There’s no need to change any of the directories.

  3. Update your Local Group Policy settings


    Now that we’ve run the reset command, we need to force our group policy settings to update to reflect the new changes. You can do so by entering:

    gpupdate /force

    You’ll recieve the message “Computer Policy update has completed successfully” if it updated correctly. You can close the Command Prompt window now if you wish

Now that you’ve reset your group policy settings in Windows 10, you may want to enable the useful ones again. Here are some we recommend:
If you have any more Local Group policy tips, let us know in the comments below.
 

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