Local Group Policy Issue. Policy not changing. Glitch?

Hello everyone. This is my first post to this forum. I hope someone can help me out. I am having a problem with Local Group Policy. I have been experimenting with this just for learning purposes and I am stumped by something. One of the first things I tried doing was removing icons from the system tray. I figured it would be a quick way of knowing if changes are taking effect. I noticed though that if I enable the Policy called "Remove Clock From System Notification Area" under Start Menu and Taskbar, that it will indeed remove the clock but I can not get it to come back. I have tried setting it back to disabled or Not Configured and it still will not show. I have tried Gpupdate /force and multiple restarts. Nothing changes. Now, if I choose some other policy setting such as "Remove the Battery Meter" then I can turn it on and off just fine. Is it possible there is a glitch with some policy settings? Is anyone able to try this on a test PC to see if they experience the same issue? Any suggestions are much appreciated. Thank you.

Brink said:

Hello Chris, and welcome to Ten Forums. :)

That is odd that the policy will not apply. You might see if using the tutorial below to reset Group Policy back to default may be able to help.

Local Group Policy - Reset to Default - Windows 7 Help Forums

I actually went in and manually removed the files in those folders earlier and that did not work. To be sure I ran the .bat file from the page you gave me. No difference.

TairikuOkami said:

Seems like a glitch, even when I remove the policy via reg, it will not appear when explorer is restarted.

reg delete "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer" /v "HideClock" /f
reg delete "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer" /v "HideClock" /f

The clock has to be enabled manually afterwards via Turn system icons on settings.

So as a total noob to this sort of thing, I might have discovered a bug? Anyway, yes I have tried everything. I have went into the registry and even manually added the HideClock and set it to 0. I have removed policy files on the PC, pretty much everything. It seems like the system just totally ignores anything I change regarding the clock. This kind of lowers my confidence in group policy settings in general.

Quick Question. How do you bring those options up? I was looking around for a way to see if I can choose what is shown in the System Tray but didn't find it. I remember being able to easily modify the setting in other versions of Windows.

Thanks everyone. At least I can get the clock back now. I submitted the Feedback regarding this issue with the Store App