UPDATE: The Group policy debugging log enable method discussed in this post for Windows 7 OS also works for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012
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