Startup group policy not working using %windir%

[Zenosyne]

Hello everyone,

I am new to networking and spent the last few days setting up a Windows Server 2016 environment with a domain controller, dhcp server and file server using VirtualBox following tutorials and doing research. All is working well and now I am now trying to wrap my head around Group Policies.

I am trying to have all users start up notepad on logon, so I can work my way up from there. The initial result I found on the internet described adding C:\%windir%\System32\notepad.exe to the 'Run these programs at user logon' policy. When I try this nothing happens on the machine. When I paste the link in the user's explorer the notepad starts as normal. When I replace this path with the absolute path without the variable (C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe) it works fine and the notepad starts after a small delay.

My question is, why is %windir% not working on my logon group policy? I hope you can follow as my knowledge is very limited. I added a screenshot as clarification. I have been googling for a while and could not find any post regarding this. Thank you for reading!

 

[Neemobeer]

Remove the C:\. %windir% expands to C:\Windows so your policy is trying to apply to C:\C:\Windows.

 

[Zenosyne]

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately I tried that shortly after posting while looking up the environment variables. Current setup is %windir%\System32\notepad.exe and nothing is happening.