The other day, a lady phoned me to say that she couldn’t open any programs on her PC, which was running Windows 11, with the message:
This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator.
This is yet another example of nonsensical messages that Windows often spits out, so I took on the role of the all-seeing, all-powerful, and mystical system administrator. Fortunately, the lady’s version of Windows 11 was Pro, so after a few searches, I discovered the solution. By the way, as far as I know, you can’t run Group Policy Editor in Home versions of Windows.
Hit the Win key+r and type in gpedit.msc then navigate to user Configuration>Administrative Templates>System, then expand System, locate Don’t Run Specified Windows Applications, double click on that and change the setting to Not Configured.
I have no idea why this problem appeared, but after rebooting the PC, it went away, and the lady thanked me profusely, delighted that her problem had been fixed. I, too, was happy because she paid me handsomely for my work, but I was still left scratching my head as to why it arose in the first place.
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