The ‘Windows could not connect to the GPSVC service’ error occurs if GPSVC is not running on the computer.

Here at Bobcares, we have seen several such Windows-related errors as part of our Server Management Services for web hosts and online service providers.

Today we’ll take a look at the causes for this error and see the fix.

Why does ‘Windows could not connect to the GPSVC service’ error occur

Normally, this error occurs if the Group Policy Client service (GPSVC) is not running on the computer. The error appears as below.

So if you try to open the command prompt and start the GPSVC manually using the net start gpsvc command, then another error appears as below.

System error 5 has occurred.
Access is denied.

This issue arises if the system image or the registry is damaged. It happens if you’ve disabled the Group Policy client service on the computer by changing permissions on the service registry key.

How we fix the error ‘Windows could not connect to the GPSVC service’

Now let’s take a look at how our Support Engineers assist our customers in resolving this error message.

In order to fix this error, log in as a local administrator account, and change the GPSVC registry keys. Here are the steps for it.

1. First, run the registry (regedit.exe) and ensure that there are entries for GPSVC in the registry. For that, go to the reg key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services. Make sure that the GPSVC key exists and has %systemroot%\system32\svchost.exe -k netsvcs –p specified for ImagePath.

2. Now go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Svchost and ensure that GPSvsGroup is present in the list of the parameters.

3. In case, the GPSvsGroup is missing then manually create it. Create a REG_MULTI_SZ parameter with the name GPSvcGroup and the value GPSvc.

4. After that, create a new reg key with the name GPSvcGroup under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Svchost;

5. Now create two DWORD (32bit) parameters in the new GPSvcGroup branch.
AuthenticationCapabilities – value 0x00003020 (12320)
CoInitializeSecurityParam – value 0x00000001 (1)

6. Finally, restart your computer.

However, you can simply import the following REG file to the registry:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Svchost]
"GPSvcGroup"=hex(7):47,00,50,00,53,00,76,00,63,00,00,00,00,00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Svchost\GPSvcGroup]
"AuthenticationCapabilities"=dword:00003020
"CoInitializeSecurityParam"=dword:00000001

Then you can check the GPSVC permissions and compare them with those on a computer working normally. You can the below command to display current service permissions.

sc sdshow gpsvc

Once you restart the computer, the GPSVC connection error must disappear.

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Conclusion

In short, this error occurs if GPSVC is not running on the computer. Today, we saw the solution provided by our Support Engineers.