Getting "Some of these settings are hidden or managed by your organization" after malware [Solved]

Question

I had malware and now I'm getting:

"Some of these settings are hidden or managed by your organization" after malware

On the App screen in Windows under settings. I had this in Chrome and Edge and was able to get rid of them, but I don't know how to get rid of this one. I am using Windows 10 home, so I don't have the group policy editor.

I believe I need to remove registry keys, but I don't know which ones or where.

I'm not sure if this message hurts anything, since malware bytes and Avast killed the underlying malware, but I would like to remove it if I can.

Deleting "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender\SmartScreen" fixed it! I'm not sure what those key/values did, because the one value was just a number and the other one was just the word Anywhere. The other ones in Chome and Edge actually contained like urls and file paths.

Thanks guys!

Answer 1

The Group Policy settings are just Registry entries, so they can be changed using Regedit.

• Press Windows, type rege, and select Regedit.

• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender\SmartScreen.

• There are two values in that key,

  • ConfigureAppInstallControl, currently set to Anywhere
  • ConfigureAppInstallControlEnabled, currently set to zero.

  Those values may be deleted , or even the whole key, SmartScreen.

That should return control of Apps & Features to you.

Caveat: Despite scanning with two anti-malware suites, there could still be remnants of that malware left, such as a backdoor. Consider scanning with yet another tool (check that the utility has a good reputation), and also reinstalling Windows, keeping files.