Recently Microsoft released Windows 10 April 2018 Update (V1803) to stable channel users. However, after upgrading my one of V1709 running machine to V1803, I found that I can no longer open Group Policy snap-in on newer version. This snap-in is one the most used snap-in for me. If it doesn’t work, it feel the machine useless.

Whenever I try to open the Group Policy snap-in, following message appears on the screen:

Failed to open group policy object on this computer. You may not have appropriate rights. Details: Unspecified error.

FIX Failed To Open Group Policy Object On This Computer In Windows 10

Although, I’ve all the administrative privileges on the machine, still I was getting this error. The Details part in this error message simply meaningless as it doesn’t tells us what is the root cause for this issue, so that we could fix it.

After researching a bit on this issue, I came to conclusion that version upgrade might have corrupted the contents of Group Policy folder on the system root drive. Hence clearing out the corrupted contents could help to solve this issue. I tried this method it worked for me in the single shot.

So in case if you’re also facing this problem on your Windows 10/8/7 editions, here is how to fix it:

FIX: ‘Failed To Open Group Policy Object On This Computer’ In Windows 10/8/7

1. Press W8K + R and type %WinDir%\System32 and press Enter key. In the System32 folder, click on View tab in the File Explorer ribbon and then check Hidden items option. Now open GroupPolicy folder, which was hidden by default.

FIX Failed To Open Group Policy Object On This Computer In Windows 10

2. Inside GroupPolicy folder, rename Machine folder to Machine.old.

FIX Failed To Open Group Policy Object On This Computer In Windows 10

3. In the Folder Access Denied prompt, click Continue. Type in your user account credentials, if required. Renaming should be done now. Close File Explorer.

FIX Failed To Open Group Policy Object On This Computer In Windows 10

That’s it! You can now try to open Group Policy snap-in and this it should open without any error.

In case if issue still persists, go back to step 2 and also rename the User folder to User.old.

Check the video illustration of this trick below:

Hope this helps!

24 Comments

Add your comment

  • mohammad

    thank you a lot sir. you save a lot of time my time.

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Glad we could help 😎

  • Joyce Skrovonek

    Worked like a charm, thank you.

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Glad to help!

  • Brent

    worked for me to after upgrading Windows 2016 Server to 2019 Server ed.

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Happy to help 😊

  • shaikchand

    Supper It’s working

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Glad to help!

  • JTR

    Thanks! This helped a lot

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Glad to help JTR 😊

  • Naveed Alizai

    thnx dear it really worked.

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Happy to help Naveed 😎

  • Leon

    Thanks so much! Been looking to fix this for a year.
    Perfect instant fix not even the Microsoft support guys could do for me. They kept suggesting doing a reinstall of Windows but that didn’t ever work.

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Glad to help Leon 😊

  • AKCHITRANS

    I updated this steps both local as well local store but n result i stuck badly not able to change any thing

  • geert

    Thanks, worked after upgrading to windows 10 1909

  • Kapil Arya

    Glad to help geert!

  • DJ

    Thank you so much!!! It worked absolutely on my Windows server 2012.

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Glad to help DJ!

  • ryan

    thank u,thank u,than u

  • Kapil Shinde

    Thanks Kapil….! This helped a lot…!

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Glad to help!

  • SMMH

    Thanx a lot dude

  • Kapil Arya

    ^^ Happy to help!

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