How to enable gpedit on Windows 10 & 11

[Reverend Jim]

I recently fell victim to the latest Windows 11 update - KB5023706. The symptom was intermittent BSODs (blue screen of death). It wasn't until after I had done a thorough slate of hardware and system diagnostics that I came across an online tech article explaining the problem's likely origin. After I uninstalled the update and rebooted, Windows Update merrily downloaded and installed it again. Microsoft Tech Support was almost helpful in telling me to switch to a metered wifi connection and pausing updates. Their update hide/show tool refused to let me hide KB5023706 so they suggested I disable updates in the interim using the group policy editor (gpedit.msc) which they should have known has not been available on Windows Home systems for many years.

However, even though gpedit.msc does not come enabled with Windows x Home, it still actually comes bundled, but disabled. If you want to enable access to gpedit.msc, save the following script to enable-gpedit.bat and run it from an admin shell. Once you do that, and reboot, you can run it from the command line or the menu run command by typing gpedit.msc

@echo off 

pushd "%~dp0"

:: Enables gpedit.msc for Windows Home systems
::
:: Must be run from an admin shell

dir /b %SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientExtensions-Package~3*.mum >List.txt
dir /b %SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\Microsoft-Windows-GroupPolicy-ClientTools-Package~3*.mum >>List.txt
for /f %%i in ('findstr /i . List.txt 2^>nul') do dism /online /norestart /add-package:"%SystemRoot%\servicing\Packages\%%i"

You can disable updates by navigating to

Local Computer Policy   
    Computer Configuration
        Administrative Templates
            Windows Components
                Windows Update
                    Manage end user experience

Double-click the Configure Automatic Updates policy on the right side.
Select the Disabled option.

Windows Update should now be paused until you manually re-enable it.

There are a ton of other settings (change at your own risk) that can otherwise only be modified by editing the registry. I've checked that this works on both Windows 10 Home and Windows 11 Home.

[Dani]

Sorry to hear. Has Microsoft since released a patch to whatever update was causing the BSOD?

[Reverend Jim]

Not yet but I'll hold off on the updates until they do. The only reason I am running W11 is because it came with the new laptop. In all aspects I have seen W10 is superior.