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Add Group Policy Editor to Control Panel

If you find yourself using the Group Policy Editor all the time, you might have wondered why it doesn't show up in the Control Panel along with all the other tools. After many hours of registry hacking, I've come up with a registry tweak to let you do just that.

You can't manually make the registry tweak yourself using regedit.exe because there's no way to add a default item of type REG_EXPAND_SZ, but I've provided a registry hack download for you.

Please note that this does not work with the Home editions of either Vista or XP because they don't come with Group Policy Editor.

Windows Vista

After installation, you will find the new item by first choosing Additional Options in Control Panel.

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You should now see Group Policy Editor in the list.

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Windows XP

You will have to switch to the Classic View in order to see the icon in XP.

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And now it will show up in the list of icons.

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Installation

Just download and extract and double-click on AddGroupPolicyToControlPanel.reg to add the icon. There is also another registry script that will remove the items.

Download AddGroupPolicyToControlPanel Registry Hack

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. When he's not coming up with great how-to articles, he's probably writing at his personal blog. This article was written on 10/16/07 and tagged with: Windows Vista, Vista Tips & Tweaks

Comments (2)

  1. Jason

    Just found this site, and so far I'm enjoying it. :) Keep up the good work.

    But as for this hack, I'm running XP Pro w/SP2 and you most definitely can add a Reg_expand_sz value. Right click->new and it's the last option (Expandable String Value)

    ~J

  2. Shivu

    searching the google for a while, I found this site. I am using windows vista home premium.

    this did not work?


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