Event 1096, The Processing of Group Policy failed.

Recently i came across a group policy processing failure when a user tries to do a gpupdate /force, it works for the User Policy and fails for the computer policy with an error that group policy failed processing. As a result any computer policy on this device will fail.

Upon checking the Event viewer, the system log was filled with the Event ID 1096 as attached below.

As per the Event ID 1096, Windows couldn't apply the registry-based policy settings for the LocalGPO. The first place to check was the Registry.pol file located locally on the computer.


Steps to resolve this issue:

1. Delete or rename the registry.pol file under c:\windows\system32\grouppolicy\machine\registry.pol
2. Configure any administrative template settings in the local Computer settings GPO. This will re-generate automatically a new registry.pol file.
3. Gpupdate /force will run normally without any problem.

For more info about Local GPO and corrupted Registry.pol, please check the below links:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc978247.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/support/ee/transform.aspx?ProdName=Windows+Operating+System&ProdVer=5.2&EvtID=1096&EvtSrc=Userenv&LCID=1033