Group Policy is an infrastructure used to deliver and apply one or more desired configurations or policy settings to a set of targeted users and computers within an Active Directory environment.. Previously handled by Winlogon, group policies are now controlled by the Group Policy Client. The service has been ‘hardened’ due to the strong ties it has to many security aspects in Windows machines. The service is started automatically, and though most sites would advise you that it’s fine to disable, you’ll find that you cannot. This is understandable in Business, Enterprise and Ultimate, but it’s unclear why this service would be included in the Home versions. It also seems unnecessary to start it automatically if the computer is not part of an Active Directory.