Why does a GPO not apply to a certain OU

Question

I am having an issue, where a GPO for Power Options doesn't apply to a certain OU even though I have linked it. This GPO is an exception from the Domain-Level GPO for Power Options and should only apply to the clients in this OU.

The GPO basically says to NEVER shutdown, hibernate or sleep and to also never allow the displays to go off. The problem I have is that it doesn't apply even though the GPO is listed when I perform gpresult. The client sleeps after 500 seconds.

And that is where my confusion starts, because the 500 seconds are nowhere declared, not even in the Domain-Level GPO.

When I look into the computersettings it shows, that the wanted settings are applied but it doesn't behave correctly.

I'll add pictures below so you can see exactly what I have fabricated. I hope you can help me with this issue and maybe explain the general dynamics so I can expand my knowledge about this topic.

This is the policy that needs to apply to the OU

This is the Domain Level Policy

The structure

Here is a screenshot of gpresult.html

and a screenshot of powersettings in registry

Answer 1

From your screenshots, the GPO you want to apply is changing the settings for the power plan named "high performance", while the domain-level policy is changing settings for the plan named "balanced". They both try to set themselves as the active plan, so it might be a race condition.

You should probably use the same plan name if you want to overwrite the domain-level power settings.

OR, you might be able to use the Administrative Templates\System\Power Management\Select an active power plan GPO setting instead though, which shows up in the registry here:

Path  = HKLM:\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Power\PowerSettings\
Name  = ActivePowerScheme
Value = 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c (for high-performance)