How do you change group policy on windows xp home?

May 31, 2006 2:27 PM

I want to change the group policy on windows xp home. It is easy to do on Windows xp professional, but I have a computer that is running windows xp home. The windows firewall is greyed out and will not let me reactivate. When I try it tells me that the firewall is being controlled by group policy. Where can I find group policy on xp home?? I'm running sp2. Is this a known issue with SP2?? thanks.
posted by tesseract420 to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Is this even possible with XP Home? MS deliberately disabled features that would be useful in settings with lots of machines to create differentiation for XP Pro.
posted by Good Brain at 2:37 PM on May 31, 2006

I can't set up the firewall because of group policy settings. So how do you edit the group policy settings?
posted by tesseract420 at 3:00 PM on May 31, 2006

First, try loading up the Group Policy Management Console. Click Start, then Run, and type:
gpedit.msc

The setting you're looking for will be under either Computer Configuration or User Configuration, so check both. Go to Administrative Templates -> Network -> Network Connections -> Windows Firewall, and make sure every setting under there is set to "Not Configured"

If that doesn't work, download Hijack This and run it, and report back here with the log. There's a good chance it'll be able to fix the problem, and I have a feeling it might reveal other nasties as well.
posted by CrayDrygu at 3:13 PM on May 31, 2006

(Oh, also: Don't go telling Hijack This to fix things unless you know what you're doing. HT doesn't just report problems. A lot of things it lists shouldn't be changed.)
posted by CrayDrygu at 3:15 PM on May 31, 2006

Is it possible you don't have administrative rights on said computer and this is why you have no access to the group policies and/or firewall control panel?
posted by jimmy0x52 at 3:55 PM on May 31, 2006

According to Microsoft Windows XP Home does not support group policy. It sounds like something is seriously buggered on this machine.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:04 PM on May 31, 2006

I don't have a Windows XP Home machine to test this out but here's instructions for adding the Group Policy Editor snap-in, provided you have access to a Windows XP Pro machine or CD.

Windows XP Home does not include GPEDIT; XP Home users can apparently run this program if they have access to files from an XP Pro (or possibly Win 2000?) installation, by doing the following:

* Copy the files gpedit.dll and fde.dll from \WINDOWS\System32 on the XP Pro machine to \WINDOWS\System32 on the XP Home machine.
* From a command prompt issue the following commands on the XP Home machine: regsvr32 C:\WINDOWS\System32\gpedit.dll

* regsvr32 C:\WINDOWS\System32\fde.dll Open the Microsoft Management Console (mmc.exe) and select File->Add/Remove Snap-in... Then click Add. Select the Group Policy snap-in from the list of installed snap ins.

You can now edit the Group Policy on the local machine. But XP Home doesn't support the same feature set as XP Pro, so the policies you are looking for might be missing.
posted by junesix at 4:11 PM on May 31, 2006

Circumventing Group Policy Settings By Editing The Registry. I believe there is also a command-line group policy editor that you can download for XP Home.
posted by evariste at 9:41 PM on May 31, 2006

There's no easy way to edit Group Policy on a stock XP Home; you have to edit the registry manually. There's a Microsoft document available at

http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/a/3/aa32239c-3a23-46ef-ba8b-da786e167e5e/PolicySettings.xls

that tells you which keys do what.

To deal with your firewall issue, have a poke around inside HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsFirewall\StandardProfile.
posted by flabdablet at 11:09 PM on May 31, 2006

Do you use Windows Live OneCare? I do, and see the same thing as you. It seems to take over your firewall settings.
posted by tkolstee at 7:45 AM on June 1, 2006