Windows Tip: Revisiting Group Policy Refresh

June 30, 2006 —

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In a recent tip here in Windows in the Enterprise, I mentioned that administrators could remotely refresh Group Policy on desktop computers using a free tool from Sysinternals called psexec and that this can save them the labor of touching (visiting) desktops when Group Policy refresh needs to be forced for some reason. Several readers of this newsletter commented afterward that there are other tools that can be used to do this, and this week I'd like to thank these readers for their feedback and highlight their suggestions below.

First off, Robert Lundh of Special Operations Software wrote to me saying "Hi Mitch! I just read your article about remotely forcing a gpupdate on a machine using the sysinternal psexec tool. I want to inform you of an alternative that we released some weeks ago called Specops Gpupdate. I think it is really cool, hope you agree. You can read more and download a copy here." This free tool definitely sounds like it's worth trying out, and any readers out there are currently using it in their enterprise, feel free to email me your experience using it. Thanks for letting us know about this, Robert!

And second, Darren Mar-Elia the "GPO Guy" says, "Mitch, regarding your remote GP refresh article, just wanted to let you about a free command-line utility I've written that folks have found useful. It's called rgprefresh and it can be found at my site www.gpoguy.com. It has the ability to refresh both Win2K and XP/2003. Thanks." Darren knows his stuff when it comes to Group Policy, and his site is a terrific source for GPO tips, tools and whitepapers that's well worth checking out. Thanks Darren!

Finally, in an earlier tip here I mentioned that Microsoft MVPs were a valuable resource and enterprise admins should try and find out if there are any MVPs living in their area. I just wanted to mention to readers that Microsoft's MVP site now has a search page that can be used to find MVPs by name, expertise, or locality, so use it today and get connect with MVPs in your city, you'll find it's worth it.

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