What is Local Group Policy

Group Policy isn’t only useful for networks of computers in businesses or schools, however. If you’re using a Professional version of Windows, you can use the local Group Policy Editor to change Group Policy settings on your computer.

Using Group Policy, you can tweak some Windows settings that aren’t normally available from the graphical interface.

For example, if you want to set a custom login screen in Windows 7, you can either use the Registry Editor or the Group Policy Editor – it’s easier to change this setting in the Group Policy Editor. You can also tweak other areas of Windows 7 with the Group Policy Editor — for example, you can hide the notification area (also known as the system tray) entirely.

The Local Group Policy Editor can also be used to lock down a computer, just as you’d lock down a computer on an enterprise network. This can be useful if you have children using your computer. For example, you can allow users to run only specific programs, restrict access to specific drives, or enforce user account password requirements, including setting a minimum length for passwords on the computer.