Can't get Local User GPOs to work for the User Group on XP Pro

[Mike]

Alright, I reeeeaaaalllly needs some help on this one. For some reason me,
and the top 3 IT guys that we have here, can only get the accounts in the
Administrator's group to obey both the local computer GPOs and the local
user GPOs. The accounts in the User's group will only follow the local
computer GPOs.

To give the briefest summary possible, my company sells locked down
computers for use with our security system. We just started building up the
next generation of these computers based upon the image of the last
generation, which worked fine (new computer is from the same manufacturer
and is the same type it's just 'Vista optimized' now). Some of the basics
of this computer image are as folllows:

-Local Computer and User GPOs used to lock the machine down.
-One account added to the Administrator's group and on account added to the
User's group and set to auto-logon.
-Computers operate on a completely stand alone, static network.

Other then the hardware, the only big difference between the old computers
(again, that worked fine) and the new computers is that we have finally
included all of the current 120 some windows updates in the image.

For whatever reason though, if I log in under the account in the User group
none of the user GPOs are being enforced. Even if I do a gpupdate /force
and then gpresult, the Local User GPOs state last applied as NA. The
Administrators work fine though.

PLEASE HELP!
Mike

 

[Steven L Umbach]

First thing to check is that users/authenticated users have
list/read/execute permissions through the path to
\windows\system32\grouppolicy\user\registry.pol. If you logon as a regular
user you should be able to navigate to and open registry.pol [with notepad].
It sounds like possibly only administrators have permissions to that
folder/file. FYI by design "computer" configuration applies to the computer
and thus EVERY user that logos to that computer whether it be administrator,
user, domain administrator, or anyone else.

Steve