so, I was logged on my admin account, setting stuff in the group policy, basically trying to lock everything down, not realizing that it was actually locking it down for the administrator user's accounts.

I can now not add group policy into MMC, so I am totally locked out. What do I do short or reformatting to fix this?

I've tried creating power user accounts, loggin in under "administrator" but I still have no luck...

This is poop! POOP!

Someone help!

hehe, I falled in that once too, and what I did was a "System Restore"..., system restore is 'ur friend, use it!

I disabled it.

Do you think this means I have to reformat it?

LOL probably

Gotta use those tools bro

LMAO
ROFL
LOL
MWAAHAAAAHAAAHAAAHAA!

Um... lame? ;(

I just reformatted it, which was in the boxes best intrest. It was a media box for roms and such on the tv... reformatting it let me streamline it a whole shit load better than it was.

Um... lame? ;(

Very lame.. yes

Sorry Arin, but having done this myself also in a Win2k box, the best thing to do with this is laugh at it. I don't actually think he was laughing at you.

When I did it I spent a day or two trying to get around it, punched a wall and reformatted it. Then had to cop the usual round of taunts from the rest of the IT division.

These days I find that if I don't laugh at these stupid things about computers I just get crazy.

Actually I finished laughing about it too (when it happened 2 me, of course), 'cause WTF!, what else could I do!!..., so I think the moral here is:
Learn to use it before using it, or enable system restore before.
Cheers.

Group policy lockout fix!

I did the same thing. To fix the problem I imaged a second laptop without the group policy change then using MMC I browsed to the laptop that I had locked down group policy and changed the policy back.

It took me about 45 minutes to fix the problem.

This might help if someone does this again, however it will still require some reading on their part.

First, you must realize that group policy is nothing more than a registry editor with a GUI and some added explanations. So anything that you can set there can be unset via the proper registry key.

Check this link, which is specifically on disabling run keys in the registry:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/tec...entry/93792.asp

or you can go here for a slightly broader view:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/tec...entry/GPRef.asp

I realise this post is a long time after the question, but my solution may help some other readers who have the same problem.

I also had the same problem, but instead of reinstalling etc as some suggested I was able to fix by browsing with IE to a network folder to load A43 file manager (which doesn't need to be installed). Then used A43 to opening a command prompt. Type MMC to load the console. Then add group policy editor and reverse all the settings I had enabled.

In hindsight it may have been also possible to browse to C:\windows\system32 and load cmd.exe but I think my local drive was locked out by group policy. I had disabled the Run box though so getting to CMD by normal means was not possible.

A43 file manager worked for me anyway!

use ERD commander... simple.