Windows 7 - Group Policy Client Service

What is it? How did it get activated? Do I need it? If not, how do I get rid of it? I have never heard of it before.

This is a single user computer. No Homegrouping.

Asus G72 Gamer's Notebook Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

Yes you need it, no you cannot get rid of it. Leave it alone.

Why did it just now appear? I've had Windows 7 on 2 computers for a year and have never seen it before. it never appeared in Vista either. Did I install something that activated it? Ealier this week Windows crashed and I restored it back to factory settings from an ISO Recovery Disk. Could this have activated it?

What does it do? When I start the computer it says preparing your desktop. I wasn't able to find anything about what it is for on the web.

Dwight, this service did not "just now appear". It has always been there is Windows 7, I guess you just did not pay attention to it before. Read this description of it. Notice the line "You cannot disable this service via services.msc, nor change its state by using a registry patch". Just leave it alone and do not worry about it.

I think I've got pretty much the same problem as the OP, but I'm not sure.

I want to enable "Automatically check for solutions" (in Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Action Center\Problem Reporting Settings) but it's grayed out and therefore I can't change it. I recall that at one time in the recent past I could do that, but now I can't. The error message says "Some settings are controlled by Group Policy" and that they can't be changed unless done so by a system administrator. However, I'm using Windows 7 Home Premium on a single, non-networked PC and I thought I was told that there is no Group Policy editor in this version of Windows 7, and BTW I'm using an administrator account.

Can anyone tell me how I can enable "Automatically check for solutions" or why it's turned off? Thanks!

Frank D