Which has the greater precedence: Windows Group Policy or Registry Keys

Question

Hi,

Say there is a group policy that prevents the user from using the "run" command in Windows. What would happen if there was a registry key that contradicted this i.e. allowed the user to use the run command?

Would the user be able to use "run" or not?

Thanks a lot for any answer!

Answer 1

I cannot confirm this entirely but my assumption would be that the Group Policy would take precedence.

Answer 2

Group policy is periodically applied to the registry so if a group policy is set to a certain setting it will change the relevant registry setting to conform to it, so in that sense group policy takes precedence.
However, when the OS checks to see whether the user should be permitted to use the run command it will only check the registry, not group policy so in that sense registry takes precedence.

In practice it means that if you change the registry at any given moment then the registry setting will be honored, until the next group policy update takes place, at which point your registry change will be overwritten to align with group policy. In this regard you can think of group policy as being an automatic mechanism for changing registry settings to the desired value in organisations.

The frequency at which group policy is applied is also configurable but usually it gets applied when you log on to windows and then at scheduled intervals.