Windows 10: Do policies set in gpedit (Win Pro) override Regedit entries?

Win 10 1909 Pro (18363.778)

Long story short, but I'm one of the many affected by the May 2020 HP desktop KMODE BSOD and bootloop.

This is apparently caused by Defender clashing with HP software, and the temporary fix is to disable Defender entirely through adding the keys via Regedit. I did that.

When the machine started working after that, I also disabled Defender through the gpedit "Turn off Windows Defender antivirus" setting to "Enabled".

I'm now planning how to claw back to normality, which includes allowing Windows Updates (also turned off in gpedit as well as via UI) and re-enabling Defender (if I have to).

I have two questions:-

Is it mandatory to have Defender and all components turned ON when updating Windows, especially Quality Updates? I'm also using Avast and Malwarebytes, and don't really want Defender if I can avoid it, as it seems to be a source of problems. I'd prefer to leave it disabled for the near future.

Secondly, I have mimicked or duplicated some policies by making them through gpedit and regedit. Does anything set through gpedit override regedit entries. Specifically, if, until I want to move on with this, can I revert or delete the Defender regedit keys I made, to "clear the way", but, for the moment, leave the matching gpedit policy of having Defender set firmly disabled and have it do exactly that?

:)

 

KB4016240 win 10 pro: disable lock screen policy doesn't work

Subject. It's like the patch hasn't been applied at all. Regedit entry is there, gpedit policy is enabled. It's interesting that PRO sku is not mentioned in the description.

 

GPEDIT is completely ineffective in Win10 PRO

Hi joeyberger,

Sorry for the delay in response

What specific setting did you change in gpedit?

Do you face the issue only with gpedit?

We suggest you to run this command and check.

• Press Win + X keys on the keyboard and select
  Command Prompt(Admin)
• Type sfc /scannow
• After the SFC scan, Type or copy, paste the command in the command prompt
  DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth and hit Enter.
• Restart the computer and check.

Thank you.

 

Some settings are managed by my organization?

Hmmm... looks like gpedit doesn't see the registry settings created by that tool you used as having configured any of the policies.

Your screenshot in post #3 has a long list of apparently configured policies. The only thing I can suggest is to find each policy in turn in gpedit, set it to ' enabled' and click 'Apply', then set it back to 'not configured' and click OK. Try that with the top one in the list of 'view configured update policies', the 'Notify to download updates' one, and see if it removes it from the list of configured policies. If so, repeat for all the rest.

If that doesn't work you are searching for a needle in a haystack if want to find and delete all the registry settings that your 'security' too has created *Sad