I use Group Policy Editor in order to configure a lot of settings on Windows 10. Recently when I tried to open it from the Run prompt or directly via the Control Panel. I actually received an error stating—Failed to open the Group Policy Object on this PC. You guys might not have the appropriate rights — unspecified error. If you get the same error, then let’s see how you can instantly fix the issue and gain back access to the Group Policy Editor. In this article, we are going to talk about Failed to Open the Group Policy Object in Windows 10. Let’s begin!
Although I have all of the administrative privileges on the machine, and still I was getting this error. The Details part in this error message simply meaningless, because it does not tells us what is the root cause of this issue. So that we can actually fix it as well.
After you research a bit on this issue, I came to the conclusion. That the version upgrade might have corrupted the contents of the Group Policy folder on the system root drive. Thus clearing out the corrupted contents can help in order to solve this issue. I tried this method and it worked for me in the single shot.
Contents
Failed to Open the Group Policy Object in Windows 10
- Tap on Windows + R and type %WinDir%\System32 and click Enter key. In the System32 folder, click on the View tab in the File Explorer ribbon and then check the Hidden items option. Now just open the GroupPolicy folder, which was hidden via default.
- Inside the GroupPolicy folder, you have to rename the Machine folder to Machine.old.
- In the Folder Access Denied prompt, you have to tap on Continue. Then type in your user account credentials, if needed. Renaming should also be done now. And just close File Explorer.
You guys can select to delete all the files inside the Machine folder rather than renaming them. Windows will automatically recreate the needed files whenever you relaunch the policy editor.
The reason behind Failed to Open Group Policy Object error
After going through Microsoft forums, I actually noticed some of the users reporting about the same. And one of them shared about the corruption of the Registry. pol along with Event ID 1096. The file saves Registry-based policy settings, that include Application Control Policies, Administrative Templates, and much more. There was actually a log in the Event Viewer which pointed towards this corruption too. The description basically stated:
The processing of Group Policy failed. Windows could not apply the registry-based policy settings for the Group Policy object LocalGPO. Group Policy settings will not be resolved until this event is resolved. View the event details for more information on the file name and path that caused the failure.
It basically affirms the user’s report, and what you can do is just delete the Registry. pol file available inside the Machine folder, and then open Group Policy again.
Conclusion
Alright, That was all Folks! I hope you guys like this “failed to open the group policy object” article and also find it helpful to you. Give us your feedback on it. Also if you guys have further queries and issues related to this article. Then let us know in the comments section below. We will get back to you shortly.
Have a Great Day!
Also See: How To Fix ‘Windows Cannot Be Installed To This Disk’ Error
