Trying to repair OS errors in W7 Home Premium

[ineuw]

Helping a friend to repair three OS issues that cropped up in a Toshiba Satellite 14" laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium. Unfortunately, I never used a W7 Home version, and the OS is in French with which my technical language skills too weak to understand the error messages completely.

1. The login screen no longer shows the icons and accounts of the three users. Instead it shows one empty icon frame and the user has to type in the username and the password. Once logged in the accounts themselves are functioning fine. How could I restore the login screen to show all user accounts?
2. After logging in, a message appears that the Windows Defender is disabled by the local group policy. Does the Windows home version has a group policy?
3. A similar problem exists with Windows update. The service is set to auto, the Update control is set to notify of updates, but when I try to search for new updates, it also claims of being blocked by group policy.

 

[SIW2]

Does the Windows home version has a group policy?

No


Are you able to scan with the antivirus?

 

[ineuw]

It was scanned earlier this afternoon with Malwarebytes and boot time Avast. Everything is OK.

The last Windows update was around the end of December 2017, which I know is bad. And, I translated the message of Windows update. It only says that it can't start unless it is rebooted, which I did a few times but made no difference.

I did find two Macrium backups created in December 2017. They are there stored safely in a separate partition. Since then I haven't seen the laptop. There are very few apps installed. Much of it from Toshiba and Microsoft. The laptop is used to write letters with LibreOffice, for email, and surfing.