gpupdate command is used to update Group policies in Windows operating system Domain. There are different options to use with the gpupdate but one of the most used option is /force which will reapply all policy settings.
Get Help
Even “gpupdate” command provides very basic features we may need to get some help about the options. We can list help information by using /? option like below. This will list options and option explanation of the “gpupdate” command.
> gpupdate /?
Force Only
We can force to reapply all group policy settings with the /force option. The default behavior of the /force option is only update changed policies.
> gpupdate /force
As we can see from screenshot User and Computer policies are updated successfully.
Update Only User Policies
By default all policies will be updated with the “gpupdate” command. If we want to update only the policies related with the user objects wen need to specify the /Target:User options to the “gpupdate” command like below.
> gpupdate /Target:User
Update Only Computer Policies
Alternatively, we can only update computer object-related policies with the option /Target:Computer like below.
> gpupdate /Target:Computer
Force and Reboot
If we want to force and make the system restart or reboot we should provide the option /boot next to the option /force like below.
> gpupdate /force /boot
Force and Logoff Account
We can also log off from the current session or account after updating the group policy forcibly. We will provide the /logoff option after the option /force like below.
> gpupdate /force /logoff
Set Timeout To Force gpupdate
Updating group policy may take some time or run forever if there is a problem. This problem can be a network or domain-related problem. Especially in remote branches network problems are very popular. We can set a time that will stop the update if it is not completed. We call this a timeout and use /w option and provide a time.
In this example, we will wait for 120 seconds in order to complete a group policy update.
> gpupdate /force /w:120
Force gpupdate with PowerShell
gpupdate command can be used in PowerShell too. We can use -force option like below with Invoke-GPUpdate command.
PS> Invoke-GPUpdate -force