Stuck on “Applying Specops Deploy Policy”
Problem
During start up, the computer hangs on the “Applying Specops Deploy Policy” for a few minutes.
Possible solution
The message “Applying Specops Deploy Policy” is a message that is shown until Windows decides to show something else. In other words, we can’t be 100% sure which GPO process that is causing this.
Our suggestion is to log the Windows logon process. You can then see in the log exactly how long it takes for every GPO to be processed.
An alternative is to create a test OU and add a test machine to it. Link the Specops Deploy App GPO to the OU so it applies to the machine. Make sure that no other GPO is affecting the machine.
Start up the test machine, is it slow or not? You can repeat this process by adding more and more GPO’s to the test OU and eventually you might ran into a GPO that is causing this.
We have also seen this occur when you use security filtering on a GPO and filter it on a group. You then need to add authenticated users with read permission under the delegation tab on the GPO. If that has been forgotten then it will try to read the GPO over and over again and fail. That can also slow down the startup process.