I work in a primary school and our new Windows 8.1 machines have an issue where users (everyone has roaming profiles) that are logging onto the machine for the first time won't end up with the correct 'group policy applied' proxy settings.

The (group policy / registry preferences) proxy settings I want the different groups of users to have *are* being applied (verified using process monitor) but I can then see something else (still in the same svchost process) is then taking the ones configured for the local system account (in HKEY_USERS\.Default) and overwriting them. Different user groups use different proxy ports for filtering reasons, so it's crucial the right groups of users get the right settings.

Whatever is overwriting them, when the user has no cached roaming profile on the machine, does not do it again if they log off and then on again. The problem being, users don't have a set machine and the cached roaming profiles are removed when the machine shuts down using an updated version of delprof... so when the machine boots up again, it's like the users are all logging on for the first time - except they have roaming profiles so they aren't really!

Having spent far too long looking into the issue, I'm as positive as I can be that it's nothing I'm doing and we do not have any issue with the same settings / policies being applied on our Windows 7 or old XP machines. Group policy configures the user's proxy settings and nothing else touches them.

So what is it in Windows 8.1 (up-to-date with Windows Updates) that's overwriting the user's proxy settings with those from 'hkey_users\.default\software\Microsoft\windows\currentversion\internet settings\' after gp has finished being applied? (A mere 4 seconds later according to my last process monitor capture / logs)

Hi,

You meant some pre-configured policies were overwrote after applied, isn't it? Since you have multiple user groups, is this problem occurs on all of them?

Under this situation, how about delaying the group policy apply time for test.

Hi,

Yes, the proxy settings configured in one of the policies are being overwritten later on in the login process by something else that appears to be non policy related.

We're configured to wait for the network before processing policies, use synchronous scripts and the new delay option for logon scripts in Windows 8.1 has been disabled - not that startup/logon scripts are being used for anything proxy related.

I don't know of any setting to delay the processing of policies. I'll certainly try it if you can tell me how to?!

I have captured logon activity for users in various security groups (and now even one just in 'Authenticated users', both with and without a roaming profile - such a user has very little applied to them) and there's still something that's taking the proxy settings configured in hkey_users\.default and applying them to the current user when no cached/local profile exists. Again, this is not something that appears to ever happen in Windows 7 or XP.