Need some help! Problem with local policy on Windows server

Factual Questions
1

Ok, I’m out at a site today and the customer has (for some reason) used their local policy on a file server (not a DC but a services server) to restrict just about everything, including the use of the command prompt. I guess they didn’t know that this would include the administrator user (even the local administrator).

So, my question is…how do I run the local policy editor when I don’t have access to either the command prompt (to run mmc), to explorer or to the admin programs section of the menu?

Any ideas? This is probably an easy one for the Windows gurus among us…but I’m stumped atm and could really use some help to bail me out here.

-XT

2

Can you do it via Task Manager? Can you access file manager? Then copy CMD.exe to somewhere else and rename the copy, then run it. Otherwise remotely (if you can’t run regedit directly) edit the registry while you’re logged in.

Actually, you should be able to log in as a domain admin on another machine, run MMC, and connect to the errant server from there to modify the group policy.

3

Log into another machine, and run the policy editor locally as a user with sufficient admin rights on the problem machine. Connect policy editor to the problem machine. Make changes. You probably have to reboot.