How to Reset Group Policy Settings in Windows 10

If you’re a power user of Windows 10, you must be knowing already that you can tweak default settings on your PC. While Microsoft applauds this flexibility, it could be daunting sometimes. Modifying the default settings improperly can lead to serious troubles.

And if you’re facing this kind of issue or just not liking the changes made, here’s how to revert them safely. Follow the below steps to restore the modified policies to default using Group Policy Editor.

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How to Reset Individual Group Policy Settings

1. Go to Start Menu and search as gpedit.msc This will show the Group Policy Editor app. Open it will show all the policies available in your system, including those you have changed. If you’ve made only a few changes, browse through the list to find them out and open them.
2. For example, we’ve selected the Aero Shake feature to demonstrate, which we have enabled earlier. Clicking on it will open the policy editor, where you should be changing the settings to Not Configured status, which is the default. Click OK to save changes.

These changes will reflect after restarting your system. If not, you can type in the below command on Command Prompt (as administrator) to see changes immediately.

gpupdate.exe /force

How to Bulk Reset Group Policy Settings in Windows 10

Well, if you have a handful of policies changed, you can pick them individually in the Group Policy Editor to restore them to default. If not, here’s a solution to revert them all at once.

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1.) Open Command Prompt as administrator. For this, type cmd in Start Menu and right-click on the Command Prompt app result to see the Run as Administrator option.

2.) Opening it as an administrator, type the following command and press Enter.

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

3.) And then, type this execute this command too.

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

Executing them doesn’t get you any result, and it’s just fine. You can restart the system to see the changes or type the following command to check them immediately.

gpupdate.exe /force

If you have tweaked settings using Windows Registry Editor, it follows almost the same procedure too. Find the Windows Registry through Start Menu to look out for changes and change them back to default. Also, the above process is explained using Windows 10 and applies to Windows 7 and 8 too.

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