Using Resultant Set of Policies (RSOP) to See What Policies are Applied to Your Computer

Check your computer’s applied policies with the Resultant Set of Policies console

Group Policy is the “engine” Windows uses to manage system settings, security restrictions, and software configurations. In a corporate environment, it’s how IT admins disable the Control Panel or map network drives for thousands of PCs at once. However, even on a home PC, policies can be changed by software installations or leftovers from a previous work network, leading to frustrating restrictions like “Some settings are managed by your organization.”

If you find yourself locked out of certain Windows settings, you need to see exactly which policies are active. The Resultant Set of Policy (RSOP) tool is the fastest way to get a visual report of every active restriction currently affecting your computer.

If you notice that access to something like Control Panel is blocked or you aren’t able to change your desktop wallpaper it could be a result of a group policy on your computer.

There is an easy way to check what policies if any are applied to your computer and that is to run the Resultant Set of Policies (RSOP) on your computer. Then you can see if you want these policies to be in effect and if not disable them assuming you have the right permissions.

Using the RSOP Console

1. Press Windows Key + R to open the Run box.
2. Type rsop.msc and press Enter.
3. Windows will begin “Calculating Resultant Set of Policy.” This scan looks at your local settings and any domain-level policies to see what the final “winning” configuration is.
4. Once the console opens, you can browse through the folders just like the standard Registry or Group Policy Editor.

Note: RSOP will only show you settings that are currently Defined. If a folder appears empty, it means no special policies are active in that category.

Then you will be shown the RSOP results but you will need to click though all the sections to see what policies are applied to your computer. Notice that it will only show the ones that are applied and not any that haven’t been changed. For example in the Microsoft OneDrive section it shows that 1 policy has been disabled and 1 policy has been enabled.

If you run gpedit.msc to open the Group Policy Editor and then go to the OneDrive section you will see that it shows all of the settings including the 1 that was disabled and the one that was enabled.

The “All Settings” Shortcut

If RSOP feels too slow, you can see every active policy in one single list using the Local Group Policy Editor:

1. Type gpedit.msc in the Start menu and press Enter.
2. Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > All Settings.
3. Click the State column header to sort the list.
4. Any policy marked as Enabled or Disabled is currently active. You can double-click them and change them to Not Configured to restore the Windows default behavior.

So you may be thinking, what is the point of the Resultant Set of Policies tool if you can just sort by State in the regular console? Well you can run the RSOP on remote computers to see what policies are applied on them rather than having to go to each computer and run it locally. Of course you will need the appropriate permissions to do so.

For the most detailed report, use the Command Prompt. This is necessary because RSOP cannot see “Group Policy Preferences” (like mapped drives or specific registry tweaks).

1. Right-click the Start button and select Terminal (Admin) or Command Prompt (Admin).

2. To generate a report for the computer settings, type: gpresult /scope computer /v

3. To see the report for the current user, type: gpresult /scope user /v

4. Expert Tip: To save this report as a clean web page you can read easily, type: gpresult /h report.html. This will create a file named “report.html” in your current folder that contains a beautiful, organized summary of everything.

So as you can see, it’s not too difficult to see what policies are applied to your computer in case you think that one of these policies is responsible for a particular problem you might be having on your computer.

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