Scheduled Tasks through Group Policy - Gpupdate /force

[Darylrese]

Hi guys,

I have been testing sceduled tasks through group policies today to see if we can run a silent gpupdate /force to all PC's on our network just to keep things upto date.

I created a new GPO, computer configuration > preferences > control panel > sceduled tasks and added a script to a new scheduled task which is as follows:

@echo off
gpupdate /force /wait:0


I scheduled it to run every day at 14:30 for a test.

How do i check to see if the task ran successfully? I cant see much in event viewer other than this line:

1.jpg

Is this an indication it ran successfully or is there another way to see if scheduled tasks failed or were successful?

Have i followed the correct method of performing a scheduled tasks on all machines?

Many thanks

[oxide54]

connect using shedulded tasks mmc remotely and see what it says about last run result..

to automate mass scale use WMI (probably)

[Darylrese]

Thank-you.

It says it was triggered but all the security properties are nothing like what i set in the group policy. For example i set to 'Run wheather a user is logged in or not' and its selected 'Run only when user is logged in' so it didnt run

[oxide54]

what os are clients?

[oxide54]

i just created one in a GPO linked to my workstation and it retained the correct settings.

[plexer]

To be honest you should not be needing to require a fudge like running gpupdate on your machines, if gpo settings are not applying correctly you have other issues.

GPO are refreshed at intervals anyway and unless it's a setting that needs a restart or logoff to apply then it will apply as intended, running a sheduled gpupdate will only refresh the machine settings unless a user happens to be logged on as well.

Ben

[Darylrese]

Basically our users are not understanding why some GPO's take a couple of reboots and refuse to accept its normal, GPO's are applying fine but sometimes take a few reboots which as far as i know is perfectly normal anyway. The problem is they want it to work instantly and after only one reboot. I thought forcing a gpupdate every day in the background may help to ensure policies are upto date before they reboot. Also you always get that one PC that just refuses to update on its own without forcing.

Our clients are all Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit

[oxide54]

the gpupdate happens in the background every 45 minutes or so anyway.

[ZeroHour]

/force will also reboot the clients without warning.
You can set the GP refresh period in GP itself but if its for things like software you can disable fast boot via GP which means the logon prompt takes longer to appear but all GP is applied/attempted before users can login.
Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\System\Logon then enable “Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon” should be the setting. Also its a good idea to enable verbose output, it means staff see things going on when the machine boots rather then a generic loading message and if any part takes a while they can remote the stage the machine is slowing down.

[oxide54]

/force prompts reboot when i do it????

[rslulz]

Like many have said I don't suggest forcing a gpupdate on a regular basis as the machines are going to update when they log in or 15-45 minutes depending on what you have it set at. Other than keeping things up to date was there any reason to do this?