Some Settings Are Managed By Your Organization - W10 Pro

I have literally been pulling my hair out for the last year trying to track down why some people get this message and others do not.
So far, I haven't had anyone stick with us long enough to fully diagnose the cause.
I would love for someone to send me a system having this issue.
If it was Pro, and a managed system, that would be one thing.
But it is happening to Home users, too.

At first, I thought it was malware, but that didn't pan out in most cases.
Then, I thought it was antivirus software or even Windows Defender. Couldn't find anyone willing enough to look at detailed settings there.
The message doesn't always appear in the same area of Settings.
Registry fixes, specifically for Telemetry, don't work.
Group Policy changes don't work. I even got a few people to run a batch script to enable gpedit on Windows 10 Home, but enabling Telemetry didn't fix it.
I was telling someone the other day, "If Brink and Grinler can't figure this one out. I don't know who can."

I don't know if this helps, but we got some sort of lead about an hour ago. This lady didn't particularly care about the message, but her microphone was not working, and we were sure it had to do with the fact that when she went to Privacy Settings for her Microphone, she got the message. Well, about an hour ago, she remembered that the day it happened, she was fiddling with her Audacity settings and she just now realized she had disabled her microphone in Audacity. Obviously, Audacity isn't the cause in all causes, but I think it at least shows that applications in general can affect whether this message shows up or not.

Compumind said:

Look under - PC Settings -> Update & Security.
All my systems have this.

They should also have a blue 'View configured update policies' link. If so, click on it. All my Pro systems have it too. In my case it is because I have set the group policy to notify for updates.




In addition, there should be a * at the beginning of the red '*Some settings...' message. If so, a corresponding red * lower down should give some explanation.

cknoettg said:

But it is happening to Home users, too....
The message doesn't always appear in the same area of Settings....

These messages can appear almost anywhere in Settings. When they do it just means that a registry setting that affects that particular area has been added or changed from the defaults. The 'organization' is a catch-all that just means an administrator has made the changes. For a domain-joined machine that would be an accurate description, but for a home user they are themselves the 'organization' being referred to in their role as an administrator.

This could be due to a group policy (you can set many group policies in Home with a .reg file), some 'tweaking' application has modified the registry (your Audacity example seems to fit the bill) or the user has made manual changes in Regedit. This last one can be difficult to rectify if they didn't keep notes of the changes they made.