Overwriting old policy/configuration

I have some clients that pulled in old policies which changed their configuration. When I view them, i see a number of settings in the configuration editor that I don't want them to have. If I try to apply a new configuration to them that doesn't have those settings, I notice that it's almost like they just merge. Any new settings from the new configuration join in on the old, and all the old settings remain the same.

What am i doing wrong? What do I have to do to completely overwrite an old config with a new one. There has got to be a way...

 

Are you talking about an exclusion list (or just any list) being applied through policy? Those merge instead of overwriting which is different from most other configuration options in the policy. If you want to remove list entries from the client side through policy, you need to use the "mark for deletion" option and type in the entry to remove what you don't want there.

It's a little counter-intuitive, especially if you are coming from the AD concept for policy, but it does allow you to make additional client-side exceptions which can be very useful when you have a bunch of different applications that all need their own exception rules.