Soluții

How to enable the Group Policy Editor on Windows 11 Home

Microsoft ships a useful tool called the Group Policy Editor, commonly known as Gpedit.msc or just GPEDIT, with the Pro version of its Windows operating system. It is handy for enabling or disabling functions of various elements in the OS, by changing Registry values, but in a more user-friendly way. Unfortunately, Home Edition users don’t get access to this nifty tweaking utility. But, there is a way to enable the Group Policy Editor on Windows 11 Home.

Group Policy Editor in Windows 11
Let me remind you that simply enabling the utility only lets you access the GPEDIT console’s interface, it does not apply the changes for the policy settings (at least not for the ones I tried to modify). It is still worth a shot though, especially for the price of free, and the GUI definitely works.

Note: If you have Windows 11 Pro, don’t bother with this, as you will already have the fully-functional version of the tool.

How to enable the Group Policy Editor on Windows 11 Home

1. Download the ZIP archive from our website, extract it to a folder, and you will get a BAT file.

Or, copy the code below and paste it in Notepad. Save the file with the .BAT extension like Script.BAT or GPEDIT.BAT, the name doesn’t matter.

@echo off
pushd “%~dp0″

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”
pause

2. Right-click on the BAT file and run it as administrator.

gpedit enable with a bat file

3. A command-prompt window should open. This is the DISM command, which installs the relevant packages to enable GPEDIT on your computer. Wait for the process to be completed, it may take a few seconds. You’ll know when it’s done, when you see a message that says “Press any key to continue”.

How to enable the Group Policy Editor on Windows 11 Home

4. Tap any key and the command window should close.

5. Click the Start button and type Gpedit.msc, and you should see the tool appear in the result click on it (or use the Run command with Win + R, followed by Gpedit.msc), and you will be able to access the Group Policy Editor.

GPEDIT in Windows 11

You don’t need to reboot the computer for the utility to show up, you may want to turn off the system and turn it on again. If you try to modify a policy, but it doesn’t appear to take effect, don’t be surprised. As I mentioned earlier, it’s a bit of a hit-and-miss, the tool seems to work sometimes. There is no known workaround to enable the functionality in Windows 11 Home or Windows 10 Home, besides upgrading your operating system to the Pro version, of course.

I recommend using the third-party program, Policy Plus, to make changes to the operating system. It is essentially the same as the Group Policy Editor, but with a slightly better interface.

Policy Plus in Windows 11

Please be aware that some antivirus programs detect it as a threat (I observed 4 detections on VirusTotal), these are not from major AVs, and I’m fairly certain these are false-positives.

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Delete/remove a printer driver in Print Management

To completely remove the printer driver from the device, use these steps:

1. Open Start.

2. Search for Control Panel and click the top result to open the console

3.Click on System and Security.

4. Click on Windows Tools.

5. Double-click the Print Management option.

6. Expand the Custom Filters branch.

7. Click on All Drivers from the left navigation pane.

8.Right-click the printer driver on the right side, and select the Delete option.

9. Click the Yes button.

After you complete the steps, the printer driver will no longer be available on the device. If you need to reinstall the peripheral, Windows 11 will need to download the driver again, or you will need to provide them manually.

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How to Automatically Save Screenshots in Windows 10

Are you tired of taking screenshots and pasting it in your Microsoft Paint software and then save them? There’s a much easier way to do it in Windows 10. You can automatically save the screenshots you take with a very simple technique.

The traditional way of taking screenshots is quite tedious. First you press the “Print Screen” key on your Keyboard then you paste the image in a photo editing software. In most cases people use the built-in Paint app to do it.

To take screenshots in Windows 8 or 10 and automatically save them as files, follow these steps:

  1. Press the Window + PrintScreen key on your keyboard.
  2. The screen will fade for a second which will indicate that the screen has been captured successfully.
  3. Browse to the “Pictures” folder in your Windows Explorer window. You will see a folder named “Screenshots” inside.
  4. All your screen images will be available as image files in that folder.

That’s it. The all you need to do to make that happen. The procedure involves pressing a key combination only, but it makes life much easier. If you want to capture multiple screens, simply keep pressing the key combination and all of the screens will be saved as image files in that folder.

This technique works for both Windows 8 and Windows 10.

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How to Block Ads on your Smart TV in Router

Ads can be very annoying. Especially on Smart TVs like the Samsung, LG, Roku and Sony some ads can be overwhelming. It’s not a nice feeling when you just brought in a new TV and turned it ON for the first time. You would not expect to see Ads immediately.

Worry not. We are going to share a couple of ways to block ads on your Smart TV. With those controls, you will be able to completely block the ads on your TV, even the in-app ads. Sounds cool right?

Here are the 2 ways to block ads on your Samsung, LG, Sony and Roku Smart TVs:

  • Filtering specific Ad URLs to your Home Internet Router
  • Installing BlockADA app for Android (Works on Android TVs only)

Now we will discuss each method in detail and explain all the steps required to effectively block all the annoying ads:

 Blocking Ads with your Home Internet Router

This method requires you to access your Home Internet Router’s settings and configure the Website black-listing or Parental control settings to block some specific Ads URLs.

Step-1: Access your Router’s configuration page

The first step is to access the configuration of your Home router. For this step you will need the URL address of the Router and Login / Password information.

Block websites with Content filter

The most common Router configuration URLs for some popular brands are:

  • LinkSys Router: http://192.168.1.1
  • Netgear / D-Link Router: http://192.168.0.1
  • ASUS Router: http://192.168.50.1/
  • Belkin Router: http://192.168.2.1
  • AT&T Router: http://192.168.1.254
  • Comcast Router: http://10.0.0.1

If you have a router that is not listed above, you can Google it like this “Router-brand login URL”.

When you open the page, you will be asked to login with the Administrative user and password. If you don’t remember your password you will need to contact your Internet Service Provider.

Step-2: Filter / Block specific Ad URLs

Now we will look into the procedure of blocking ads on each of the Brands Smart TVs:

For Samsung:

For Samsung you need to block the following URLs:

config.samsungads.com
gpm.samsungqbe.com
log-config.samsungacr.com
samsung.com
samsungacr.com
samsungads.com
samsungotn.net
www.samsung.net/ads
ads.samsung.com

Some of these URLs are for older TV models so you can put all of these in the Web filter to make sure that you’re fully covered.

For LG:

To disable ads that appear on your LG TV’s “My Content” tab, you need to put these links into the web filter:

ngfts.lge.com
us.ad.lgsmartad.com
lgad.cjpowercast.com
edgesuite.net
us.info.lgsmartad.com

For Sony:

For Sony Smart TVs you need to follow a different procedure which is actually easier than the ones we’ve discussed. Follow these steps:

  1. Go into Settings
  2. Find “Android TV Core services”
  3. Roll back all Updates on it. It will give you a warning that you’re rolling back to the initial version. Just Skip it.
  4. Return to the Home Screen and click on the minus ‘-‘ sign on the far left corner of the row to remove the Sponsored channel.
  5. Go back to “Apps” in Settings and look for Android TV Core services. Now Force stop it and disable it.

For Roku:

For Roku TVs here’s an easy way to remove the Interactive pop-up ads that display during commercials on Live TV:

  1. Go to Settings > Privacy > Smart TV experience
  2. Disable the “Use Info from TV inputs” option

You can also remove all other kinds of Ads on Roku Smart TVs by blocking the following URLs:

amoeba.web.roku.com
assets.sr.roku.com
cloudservices.roku.com
prod.mobile.roku.com
wwwimg.roku.com

Of course you can also disable ads from tv settings.

Go to Settings > Privacy and look for the option Use information From TV Inputs. Turn the option off to disable the ads.

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