SOLVED Group Policy Client Service

[Cgnslvs]

Recently, my brand new laptop has the error message that states:

"Windows could not connect to the Group Policy Client Service. This problem prevents standard users from logging on to the system. As an administrative user, you can review the System Event Log for details about why the service didn't respond."

I tried two methods to solve this issue. Both were through regedit. One included adding the group service policy that was originally missing from my registry. This fixed the problem for half a week.

When it came back, I checked the registry, and the group policy service was still there, so that wasn't the issue. Another method I found was to check the system log, check the GUID, find it on the registry, and then delete it. Sadly, that specific GUID did not even show up on my registry.

I'm very close to taking my laptop to a professional because I don't want to make matters worse by deleting something very important.

Can anyone offer any insight to this?

 

[Regedit32]

Hi Cgnslvs,

Welcome to the forum.

You mention you added the Group Policy Client Service to your Registry. Could you be a little more specific which Registry keys you modified as there are a couple of methods of dealing with this issue when the Registry has become corrupted.

A more common cause of this error though is an incomplete application update or corrupted update for security software, some other third party software, or for the Windows updates. Have you checked there are no pending updates awaiting a full shutdown and restart?

What build of Windows 10 are you on, and is it Home, Pro, something else?

Is your User account a member of the Administrative Group, or just a Local User?

Regards,

Regedit32

 

[Cgnslvs]

Hi Cgnslvs,

Welcome to the forum.

You mention you added the Group Policy Client Service to your Registry. Could you be a little more specific which Registry keys you modified as there are a couple of methods of dealing with this issue when the Registry has become corrupted.

A more common cause of this error though is an incomplete application update or corrupted update for security software, some other third party software, or for the Windows updates. Have you checked there are no pending updates awaiting a full shutdown and restart?

What build of Windows 10 are you on, and is it Home, Pro, something else?

Is your User account a member of the Administrative Group, or just a Local User?

Regards,

Regedit32

I used this video as help for my first fix:

I'm not sure how I can check whether there are any pending updates awaiting full shutdown and restart, but I shut down my laptop every day.

I use Windows 10 Pro.

My user account is the only account and admin.

 

[Regedit32]

Oh by the way,

The GUID key you are referring to is first obtained via the Event Viewer's:Windows logs\System.

You click the error referring to Group Policy Client Service to open, then click the Details tab to get the GUID key.

From there you would open Registry Editor and navigate to:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\GPExtensions
  
  It is here you'd expect to locate that GUID key which at one time Microsoft recommended to delete.
  
  This however, was a recommendation for Windows 7 users, and may no longer be applicable to Windows 10 users. I could take a look if you recall the GUID you removed.

 

[Cgnslvs]

I guess I should also list some symptoms as well, because otherwise I wouldn't have an issue. Quite a few of programs do not load, including Google Chrome and Vipre. Shut downs are extremely long. For example last night I shut it down at 8:00 P.M. and the laptop finished shutting down at 6:30 the next morning.

Oh by the way,

The GUID key you are referring to is first obtained via the Event Viewer's:Windows logs\System.

You click the error referring to Group Policy Client Service to open, then click the Details tab to get the GUID key.

From there you would open Registry Editor and navigate to:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\GPExtensions
  
  It is here you'd expect to locate that GUID key which at one time Microsoft recommended to delete.
  
  This however, was a recommendation for Windows 7 users, and may no longer be applicable to Windows 10 users. I could take a look if you recall the GUID you removed.

I took a picture of it actually.

{555908d1-a6d7-4695-8e1e-26931d2012f4}

What you explained is precisely what I did; I just didn't find that GUID.

 

[Regedit32]

OK,

Unfortunately it seems you stumbled into one of the many people who troll Forums promoting their solutions. This particular guy is somewhat infamous for creating Youtube videos then multiple accounts so he can post comments about how awesome the fix was extcetera - the assumed goal being to raise click rates which can lead to $$$

His suggestion to create a GPSvcGroup key in itself is not a terrible idea, but really the purpose of doing that would be if you required access to your Universal Apps while logging into your computer as a Built-in Administrator. So yes, it could create a situation that may work for you but that is not necessarily going to work for someone with a local user account that belongs to the Administrative Group.

I assume you followed all his instructions and manipulated your Registry. If you did not do all he says to do nows the time to say what you did in fact do.

In the meanwhile could you:

• Right-click on Start
• Left-click on Command Prompt
• In the Command Prompt window type or copy & paste the following command:
  
  

  reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\gpsvc" /v ImagePath

  
  Press Enter key to execute command.
  
  Post the result to thread.

That GUID you say you deleted would not be found at the location I mentioned earlier. It's here:

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WINEVT\Publishers\{555908d1-a6d7-4695-8e1e-26931d2012f4}
  
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\WMI\AutoLogger\EventLog-System\{555908d1-a6d7-4695-8e1e-26931d2012f4}
  
• Also here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\EventLog\System\Service Control Manager

Do any of those seem familiar?

 

[Cgnslvs]

C:\Users\cgnsl>reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\gpsvc" /v ImagePath

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\gpsvc
ImagePath REG_EXPAND_SZ %systemroot%\system32\svchost.exe -k netsvcs


C:\Users\cgnsl>

Here ya go.

And no, not really.

 

[Regedit32]

Well I hope you did not spend too much time editing your Registry based on that video link you posted earlier.

What you have there is your Net Service (netsvcs) is being called on from your ImagePath, and not the GPSvcGroup as in that video link. This means to work for a User account such as your current set up you need the Value: netsvcs calling on the Service: gpsvc which is the key you queried earlier.

That means you'll need to verify the SVCHost key, its subkey netsvc also to make sure the correct information is there.

• Right-click on Start
• Left-click on Command Prompt
• In the Command Prompt window enter the following commands and press enter key after each command:
  
  

  reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SvcHost" /v netsvcs

  
  Press Enter key to execute command
  
  

  reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SvcHost\netsvcs"

  
  Press Enter key to execute command
  
  Sample image of what you may see as a result:
  
  
  
  
  
  Let me know your actual results.
  
  While you are at it you could also query the Parameters of your gpsvc key also from command prompt:
  
  

  reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\gpsvc\Parameters"

  
  Results of that would also be good to see.

 

[Cgnslvs]

Here is the Command Prompt:

 

[Regedit32]

Well looking at your results everything is normal which would suggest your problem is being caused outside of this environment.

There is one anomaly though in your Value: netsvcs, that being the final Service listed in its Data value.

• AppMgmt
  
  This service is something you'd expect to see here if your computer was part of a Domain Environment. It's used by System Admins when they are deploying installations or uninstalling applications over the network using Group Policy.
  
  From what you said earlier your computer is not in such a Domain, so its questionable whether you need this here at all.
  
  It's worth checking though whether this Service is currently enabled. Click Search and type Services then press Enter key. Review the list of Services and check AppMgmt is actually enabled. This is the default setting for this Service. If you're not using this Service it is fine to disable, however, if the Service is being used and has been disabled, that will trigger a number of Group Policy failures as it must be enabled given anything installed via Group Policy will be expecting this Service to be running on boot up.

This though is where one enters the realm of GPSvcGroup and how that is currently set up. It is possible at some stage this has been removed or corrupted during a Windows Update that did not update correctly, or a Windows Image installation that failed to execute properly, or a System corruption of some other nature occurred.

I am assuming though you all ready manually added this to your Registry given you posted that video earlier that talks about this. However, to be sure:

• right-click on Start
• left-click on Command Prompt
• In the Command Prompt window type or copy & paste the following commands:
  
  

  reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SvcHost"

  
  Press Enter key to execute
  
  

  reg query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SvcHost\GPSvcGroup"

  
  Press Enter key to execute
  
  Note: this second command may trigger an error if the subkey GPSvcGroup does not exist
  
  Fire back some results.

 

[Cgnslvs]

That is the Services window with Properties for Application Management. The Status reads Stopped so I guess it's disabled? I wasn't able to find a specific enable/disable option.

For the Command Prompt:

 

[Regedit32]

OK so you have set up that GPSvcGroup as suggested in your video.

After rebooting computer is your Group Policy Client displaying as running in the Services window?

Have you reset your winsock too?

• right-click on Start
• left-click on Command Prompt (Admin)
• When the User Account Control dialog pops up click Yes
• At the prompt type netsh then press Enter key
• At the netsh > prompt type winsock reset then press Enter key
• Close prompt and any other open applications then shutdown completely.
• Restart computer.

 

[Cgnslvs]

After rebooting, GroupPolicyClient is 'Running'.

I reset winsock and shut down, then booted back up.

Everything seems to work fine right now.

 

[Regedit32]

That is sounding promising then.

If it is working as you want don't forget to mark your thread solved.

 

[jesslewis]

Hi, how are you? I am having a problem. We have 2 accounts on our laptop, it was 2nd hand when we bought it so had an account on to start with and we added on. When trying to get onto our own account it says that
Windows could not connect to the Group Policy Client Service. But I can use the original account. I've tried to do everything that you previously explained but I haven't got anywhere.

Thank you