A Description of the Group Policy Update Utility

This article describes the new command-line utility, Gpupdate.exe. This new utility replaces the /refreshpolicy switch in the command-line tool, Secedit.exe, in Microsoft Windows 2000. You can use this new utility to manually update any changes that are made to group policies (some changes can be made immediately).

After you make changes to group policies, you may want the changes to be applied immediately, without waiting for the default update interval (90 minutes on domain members and 5 minutes on domain controllers) or without restarting the computer. To make this update, at a command prompt, run the Gpupdate.exe utility. The following information describes the utility and the different switches that can be used with it:

A Description of the Utility

The Group Policy Update utility version 5.1 can be used to update Group Policy settings.

Syntax

GPUpdate [/Target:{Computer | User}] [/Force] [/Wait:value] [/Logoff] [/Boot]

Switches

/Target:{Computer | User}

This switch can be used if you want to specify that only user or computer policy settings are updated. If you do not use any switch, by default, both user and computer policy settings are updated.

/Force

This switch reapplies all policy settings. By default, only the policy settings that have changed are applied.

/Wait:{value}

This switch enables you to set the number of seconds that you have to wait for any policy processing to finish. The default value is 600 seconds. The value, zero (0), means that you do not have to wait. The value, -1, means that you have to wait indefinitely. When the time limit is exceeded, the command prompt returns, but the policy processing continues.

/Logoff

This switch can cause your session to log off from the computer after the Group Policy settings have been updated. This behavior is required for those Group Policy client computer extensions that do not process policy on a background update cycle, but are able to process policy when a user logs on to the computer. Two examples of such behavior can be observed with the user-targeted Software Installation and Folder Redirection features. This switch does not have an effect if extensions have not been called that require you to log off from the computer.

/Boot

This switch can cause a restart of your computer after the Group Policy settings are updated. This behavior is required for those Group Policy client extensions that do not process policy on a background update cycle, but are able to process policy at Startup. An example of this behavior is observed with the computer-targeted Software Installation feature. This switch does not have an effect if extensions have not been called that require a restart of your computer.

For additional information about how to force a group policy update in Windows 2000, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: