Enable Group Policy Debugging on Windows 7
People familiar with UseEnv logging for GPO debugging on Windows XP can forget that procedure if you started looking into Windows 7 operating Systems. Things have really changed and you should follow the below procedure enable debug logging on Windows 7 Computer. I guess this procedure works straight away with Windows 2008 hosts as well(I didn’t tested it).
- Logon to the Windows 7 Computer as local administrator
- Save the below few lines as .reg file and execute it on the Windows 7 computer.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionDiagnostics]
“GPSvcDebugLevel”=dword:00030002
Now time to restart your Windows 7 PC to make changes come into effect.
The debug log file will be available under “%systemroot%debugUserMode” folder and the file name is “gpsvc.log”. If you want a nice view of this log file for easy reading, I prefer you download the policy reporter tool from SysPro Software. This tool allows you to analyse the time taken for each policy detection and processing.
Let me know you are in doubt anywhere…
Happy Learning..,
Sitaram Pamarthi
thanks for that
is that DWORD value in decimal or hex?
This worked for me too, thanks.
@dstones it is a hexadecimal value. Just type in 30002 if you are creating it manually
Hi, I’m really confused, I have a big issue with some clients, that do not apply all settings from one of my GPO’s. when I enable this log, the log file is created, but it is empty, does it mean that there are no GP applyed or does it mean that there are no errors?
Moss
Something is wrong if the file is empty. Atleast it should log messages about the policies and settings that it is trying to process and the results.
Surprisingly well-written and infortamive for a free online article.