How to edit group policy without gpedit.msc?

Grall

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It seems Microsoft in their infinite wisdom does not consider pleebs running OEM versions of their OSes to be worthy of having access to the settings hidden away in gpedit. Unfortunately, they are not correct. Of course, since MS can only be trusted to be thoroughly incompetent in almost every respect.

More specifically, I'd like to turn off thumbs.db files from being created. Can this be done via a registry hack maybe?
 
Since you hate MS so much why don't you stop running their OS? Surely that would solve all your problems caused by the incompetent Microsoft!
 
Create an empty read-only thumbs.db file in every directory?

Yes, MS is punishing you (understandably though gpedit.msc is off limits to the Home versions, else with some hacked up deployment of gpedit rules and simple file shares you would replace much of the need for the Windows pro version + Windows Server dyad)

Failure to offer control for the thumbnails is not particularly justified. You'd have to use a third party file manager.
MS was stupid with XP Home : no "tasklist" and "taskkill" commands in the CLI. Really frustrating for me : not allowed to install the Unix-like subsystem in Windows 7 Pro (need Enterprise or Ultimate). People said the subsystem sucks (and it was removed from the 8.1/2012 R2 branch on) but I just wanted to use basic crap sometimes (grep, less, wget..)
 
Is you problem thumbs.db can be disabled with qpedit but the oem versions dont have gpedit ?
If so on a pc with gpedit disable thumbs.db find the newly created registry entry export it, copy the reg file to the oem pc and merge

here :
Registry path
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

Setting Name
"DisableThumbsDBOnNetworkFolders"

Type
REG_DWORD

Value
1
 
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If so on a pc with gpedit disable thumbs.db find the newly created registry entry export it, copy the reg file to the oem pc and merge
Yes, that's an interesting solution, only I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to actually accomplish that - is there even some mechanism in windows that lets you watch the registry in such a fashion (also, hope there isn't a lot of spurious registry writes going on at the time, heh.) I also don't have access to any win8 pro-equipped PCs, sadly.

@BRiT 'Preciate the input (you don't work for MS by any chance do you? :p), but dumping their OSes unfortunately isn't feasible for a gamer like me, for reasons such as linux + wine not really being any kind of a decent substitute, and Macs are too expensive for me, too slow, too proprietary and have OS quirks of their own that also drive me batshit insane at times. :)
 
@Grall , No, I don't work for MS. I'm too old to enjoy the constant crunch and political issues that would likely bring. Ah yes, the old need an OS for games deal -- I understand that crutch cause there really isn't an alternative on the PC if you want recent games.

I just haven't seen anyone constantly worked up over all the silly decisions that all companies do. I'm a bit spoiled in that I have MSDN access so I never have to put up with the silly policy decisions over what is or is not in the 'Home' version. I've also given up the fight and stopped tweaking each and every single thing in the base OS image and learn to tolerate most of the defaults.

@Blazkowicz The more I do scripting like tasks in Windows using Powershell, the more I love it, but also the more I wish Powershell was Bash with all the unix tools.
 
I just haven't seen anyone constantly worked up over all the silly decisions that all companies do.
Well, uh, guilty as charged, I guess. My life would be quite empty if I didn't have my things to get worked up about. What can I say, I'm a passionate man!

I've also given up the fight and stopped tweaking each and every single thing in the base OS image and learn to tolerate most of the defaults.
I've given up on most stuff as well. I used to tweak the hell out of my computers, but the older I've grown the less energy I have to spend on shit like that. However, this case is somewhat of an exception, when you see thumbs.db for the umpteenth time appear on the desktop just because you temp-saved a web image there to upload to a
discussion thread post you were writing...it's really aggravating, especially as thumbs.db doesn't really serve any purpose anymore except as a backwards compatibility feature for old software alledgedly (none of which I use/own.)

but also the more I wish Powershell was Bash with all the unix tools.
I read that the command line will receive a substantial upgrade in win10. That will be interesting, IMO.
 
is there even some mechanism in windows that lets you watch the registry
no need, create the fix in gpedit, the go to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer and export the key
 
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Psch, talk about entitled, thinking you can tell other people how to live their lives... :p (Not to mention, I paid good money for this abomination of an OS, so I'm gonna get my money's worth god dammit!)
 
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