We have a Windows Server 2008 R2 box that is blue screening and crashing every time it refreshes group policy.
- Computer starts up, gets to "Applying Registry policy" for a minute or so, then crashes.
- I unplugged the computer from the network during startup and, without a DC to grab GP from, I get to the Ctrl-Alt-Del screen
- Plugging the computer back into the network, then logging on with a domain user, we again get to "Applying Registry policy" and then crash
- If I leave it unplugged from the network and THEN log in, or log in with a local user account, I can get in
- When plugged back in, the computer will then reboot within a short time, presumably when the background GP refresh occurs
- To test, I made a new OU, blocked inheritance on it, and moved the computer account into it
- Now I can start up successfully while plugged into the network, however a domain user will still cause a crash because the user account does not have the GPs blocked
- Moving the user account into the new OU also removes the crash
- With no GPOs applied, the computer also doesn't crash when the background refresh applies
- Disabling all startup items in msconfig doesn't affect the issue
With all of the above, I'm confident that this only occurs when Windows attempts to apply group policy. I verified that no GPOs have been changed in over a month. No other machine (server or PC) is having this issue. Restoring the registry to a version from a few weeks back didn't help. So far, Microsoft phone support hasn't figured it out. Obviously, leaving the computer account in the test OU with inheritance blocked can't be our long-term solution. I'm at a loss over what to do next short of wiping the machine and restoring. This is an Exchange server so I'm not looking forward to restoring that.
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