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Comment by joe-collins | Hacker News Reader

> Sometimes it is easier to break a person than their computer security. Then even the most expensive solution will not help.

> Run this bat file!

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That’s where I stopped reading as well. There wasn’t even an attempt to explain what the batch file does.

Came here to say just to say all of this. 100%.

Also this is another direct quote from the article:

> Reading some comments on random websites I guess you don’t even need a brain.

Coupled with the "just run this" batch file with no explanation... huge facepalm.

There's only one reference to a bat file in the article that I saw, but that bat file is named "gpedit-enable.bat" and is at the end of a paragraph describing how that is for enabling the local group policy editor on home editions of Windows. That script itself is also quite clear with it's use of `rem` to explain what's happening. Perhaps read it again...

"Local Group Policy Editor is available only in pro/enterprise edition, but you can add it to the Home version of Windows too."

Thank you for the explanation. That makes sense.

The last two lines don't even work for me on Windows 10 Home. It looks like there's accidentally two `dir` invocations on the same line, PowerShell and Command Prompt both complain about the /B switch as if it were a missing path (I think the author meant "/b" for the bare file listing?), and the ClientExtensions and ClientTools directories don't exist for me.

Some asterisks were eaten from the file as well. Right before the .mum on each of those lines there should be a asterisk, as the goal is to glob for all the mum files related to that feature. The exact file names change depending on platform (x86 vs amd64 vs arm), and change over time due to version numbering.

Thanks!

Weirdly enough, most of the batch file is actually writing a VBS script to run the calling file as an admin.

The last two lines are what actually enable the policy editor (by installing the Windows feature through DISM, the normal way). Still better than no batch file, but an explanation would indeed be nice.

Thanks for the comments, I will update the article with more details about script.

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