Refreshing Group Policy to Activate New Settings

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

If any changes are made to the settings, all Group Policy settings are refreshed automatically every 90 minutes on a workstation or server and every five minutes on a domain controller. Additionally, security settings are refreshed every 16 hours, regardless of whether any changes have been made.

Security settings are also refreshed when you restart the computer, and you can trigger a Group Policy object refresh to apply a newly deployed GPO, including security settings. You can do so by using the gpupdate command. The gpupdate commandreplaces the /refreshpolicy option that was previously used for the secedit command.

For more information about the gpupdate command including full syntax, see "Gpupdate" in Help and Support Center for Windows Server 2003.