Mystery server-wide accent change, possible GPO involvement?

Brian Hart 21 Reputation points
2021-11-09T19:18:19.847+00:00

Midday on a Friday a couple of weeks back, a user called me while I was driving between projects and indicated that his background color had mysteriously just changed from blue to orange in his profile on our sole Remote Desktop server 2016. I found that his accent color had changed. I worked with him to fix it and chalked it up to an anomaly. But the next time I logged on as the domain admin, I found it had been changed for the domain admin as well..

I fixed it for the domain admin account, but I can still see the orange flash by as I log on, even though the accent color is fixed. So there is apparently other less-crucial color object/element involved.

I eventually found that it apparently affected everyone logged onto that server--but not on their local workstations. I did a lot of research to determine relevant HKCU registry entries, etc, and I have been setting it back manually for users as I interact with them on support issues, but I could not find any relevant HKLM entries, and it leaves the question of how this could happen.

It seems a lot like some rogue GPO with one-time results, since 1) the problem still exists where we have not fixed it, 2) the problem does not exist for first-time logons to this server, and 3) when I change the accent color to something else for a user, it stays fixed.

Has anyone out there seen this before or have an idea what could have caused it? In itself, it is a nuisance, but I do not like seeing en masse changes.

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  1. Georg Matviak 176 Reputation points
    2021-11-12T17:30:56.667+00:00

    Hello BrianHart-5909,

    Thank you for your question and reaching out. My name is Prakash and I’d be more than happy to help you with your query.

    1. First of please try power-cycle this 2016 server.
    2. Cleanup below Temp folders
      C:\Windows\Temp
      %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp
    3. Run Disk Cleanup from Select C:\ Drive from Properties- > General -> Disk Cleanup - >Cleanup system files
    4. Run sfc /scannow
    5. Run below DISM command from elevated prompt.

    DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
    DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
    DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

    1. Please run gpresult /h C:\temp\gpresult.html to see if there is any GPO setting which causes this background color changed.

    --If the reply is helpful, please Upvote and Accept as answer--

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