Run Command - Enable or Disable

Brink said:

Just about all the .reg files I have in tutorials for group policies are for the HKCU location and get applied to all users. I'm not sure why this one doesn't get applied to all users now.

Here's another one to look at and play with:

Taskbar Toolbars - Enable or Disable

Nope - that one fails to be applied to all users too.

I have tested with my base VM* and with my up to date VM**.

*W7pro64bit SP1 - no other updates
no other software, except VirtualBox drivers

**W7pro64bit SP1 - all updates - including all optional updates, except W10 offer
no other software, except VirtualBox drivers


I have tested several variations of these steps:

reboot VM
log on to user:admin account
create user2:admin account
reboot VM - just for fun

log on as user2:admin
let the new profile be built
wait a minute or two for all delayed services to do their thing

reboot VM again - just for fun - nothing was done between reboots
log on as user2:admin again
wait a minute or two for all delayed services to do their thing

merge the reg file named Disable_Taskbar_Toolbars.reg
accept the UAC and other prompts
the process claims to be successful

reboot VM
log on as user2:admin again
the toolbar option is gone from various places - as desired

reboot VM
log on as user:admin
wait a minute or two for all delayed services to do their thing
the toolbar option is present where it should be for user:admin

switch user to user2:admin
the toolbar option is still gone


One of the many variations was to:
reboot only once - after merging the reg file...
...and then using (log off/log on)
The results were the same.

Rebooting a lot was meant to make sure that other profile were not locked.


I know of no mechanism that will...
...inventory every single user account
(there could be hundreds of accounts)
...gather all of the HKCU policy settings
...merge those settings with all other users of a given computer.

As far as I know, each user's HKCU info is kept in this file:
C:\Users\username\NTUSER.DAT

During the testing above, there was a user3:admin account. It was logged on to once to create the profile folder and then the computer was restarted.

The user:admin account was used to take note of the date/time on the NTUSER.DAT file for user3:admin and then the computer was restarted again.

After completing all of the steps mentioned above, the user:admin account was used to verify that the date/time stamp on the NTUSER.DAT file for user3:admin had not changed.

I never did log back on to user3:admin to check the toolbar tab availability.

That tab was only gone from one user profile - as expected

Well any final outcome that why HKEY_CURRENT_USER reg edits not applies to all users ?
reg edits only apply to the person who runs the reg files !
Do we have to edit CURRENT_USER reg thing so that reg edits apply to all ??
I don't know why HKEY_CURRENT_USER reg edits does not applies to all users !
If i edit gpedit.msc, then it applies to all users,..but when i directly modify regedit then no effect applies to other users >.<

I tried to explain in an earlier post. Here it is again - using other words:

If you use gpedit to make this change, it writes the change to the local user's registry hive.

But, gpedit also write the change to this file:
\Windows\System32\GroupPolicy\User\Registry.pol
That file is applied to each user at logon if the OS is pro or above.


You should be able to write a script that writes the change to each user and changes the default user hive so that new users already have the change. If you cannot write such a script, then maybe someone can help you. Or maybe someone has a better way.