Logon scripts can be very handy when we need certain actions been done with a user logon such as mapping a network drive. This tutorial will show you how to assign a logon script using Group Policies.
In order to do that your account must have Domain Admin rights, delegated “edit GPO settings” rights or be an owner of the GPO.
There are four types of script you can use with Group Policy:
Logon scripts (User Configuration)
Logoff scripts (User Configuration)
Startup scripts (Computer Configuration)
Shutdown scripts (Computer Configuration)
In this example we will be focused on Logon Scripts.
Assigning Logon Scripts via Group Policy Management Console
Run Group Policy Management Console (GPMC.msc) on a domain workstation or server where it is installed.
In the left pane, expand your domain Forest -> Domains and then navigate to the domain where you want to assign a logon script.
Expand the domain name and then expand the Group Policy Objects.
Select the GPO or create a new one for assigning a script. Right-click GPO and select “Edit”.
Editing a Group Policy Object
• The window with Group Policy Management Editor (gpedit.msc) appears. • Expand User Configuration -> Policies -> Windows Settings. • Then select Scripts and double click «Logon». • In the Logon window, click the Add… button. • The “Add a Script” window appears:
• Type path to your script in the “Script Name:” field or browse to its location by clicking on “Browse…” button. • In the “Script Parameters:” field, type any optional script parameters. • Click “OK” to save the script settings and “OK” to close the “Logon Properties” window. • Close the Group Policy Management Editor and link your policy to and organizational unit (OU) where you want logon scripts to run. • To do that click on an organizational unit and then click on “Link an Existing GPO”.
• Choose the GPO we’ve just edited and click “OK”. After that right-click on the Organizational Unit and select “Update Group Policy”. In the appeared windows click on “Yes”.
Now all workstations in the OU will get our group policy with logon script and after reboot and user login the script will be executed.
GPResult.exe – is a console application designed to analyze settings and diagnose group policies that apply to a computer and/or user in an Active Directory domain. Specifically, GPResult provides the resulting set of policies (RSOP), a list of applied domain policies (GPOs), their settings, and detailed information about processing errors. The utility has been part of the Windows operating system since Windows XP. The GPResult utility let you know whether a particular policy applies to a computer, which GPO has changed a particular Windows setting, and why it takes so long for GPP/GPO to apply, even if you’ve run gpupdate /force.
In this article, we will look at how you can use the GPResult command to troubleshoot and debug the application of Group Policy in an Active Directory domain.
Contents
Resultant Set of Policies (RSOP)
How to Use GPResult Utility
How to Get RSOP HTML Report via GPResult
How to Get GPResult Data From a Remote Computer
How to Get RSOP Data for a Certain User
Possible Reasons for GPOs to not Apply
Resultant Set of Policies (RSOP)
Initially, the RSOP.msc graphical console was used to diagnose the application of group policies in Windows, which allowed the resulting policy settings (domain + local) to be applied to the computer and the user in a graphical interface similar to the GPO editor console.
Resultant Set of Policies (RSOP)
However, the RSOP.msc console does not make sense in modern versions of Windows, as it does not reflect the settings applied by various client side extensions (CSEs), such as GPP (Group Policy Preferences). Also, it does not allow searching, and provides little diagnostic information. Therefore, the GPResult command that is the primary tool for troubleshooting GPOs in Windows. Moreover, in Windows 10, there is even a warning that RSOP does not provide a full report as opposed to GPResult.
How to Use GPResult Utility
In order to check for group policy enforcement the GPResult command have to be run on the computer where you want to check for it. The GPResult command has the following syntax:
To learn more about Group Policies that apply to the following AD object (user and computer) and other settings related to the GPO infrastructure (i.e. the resulting GPO policy settings – RsoP), run the command:
Gpresult /r
The results of the command execution are divided into 2 sections:
COMPUTER SETTINGS – this section contains information about GPO operating on the computer
USER SETTINGS – user policies (policies that apply to the user account in AD)
Let’s briefly run through the main settings/partitions that may be useful in GPResult output:
Site Name – the name of the AD site where the computer is located;
CN – full canonical user/computer name for which RSoP data were generated;
Last time Group Policy was applied – the time when Group Policy was last applied;
Group Policy was applied from – the domain controller from which the latest version of the GPO was downloaded;
Domain Name and Domain Type – the name and version of the Active Directory domain schema;
Applied Group Policy Objects – lists of active Group Policy Objects;
The following GPOs were not applied because they were filtered out – not applied, filtered GPOs;
The user/computer is a part of the following security groups – domain groups that the user belongs to.
gpresult /r output
In our example, you can see that there are 3 Group Policies that apply to the user object.
Default Domain Policy;
Drive Mapping;
Outlook Coding;
If you do not want the console to display both user and computer policies at the same time, you can use the /scope option to display only the needed section. For example here is the command for user settings:
gpresult /r /scope:user
And here is for the computer policies:
gpresult /r /scope:computer
Since the Gpresult utility outputs its data directly to the command line console, which is not always convenient for further analysis, its output can be redirected to the clipboard:
Gpresult /r |clip
or a text file:
Gpresult /r > c:\gpresult.txt
To output RSOP super detailed information, you need to add the /z key:
Gpresult /r /z
How to Get RSOP HTML Report via GPResult
In addition, the GPResult utility can generate an HTML report on the applied resulting policies (available in Windows 7 and above). This report will contain detailed information about all system settings that are set by Group Policies. The resulting report is structured like the Settings tab in the Domain Group Policy Management Console (GPMC). You can generate a GPResult HTML report using the following command:
GPResult /h c:\temp\GPreport.html /f
GPResult HTML Report
To generate a report and then automatically open it in your browser, follow the command:
GPResult /h GPReport.html & GPReport.html
The gpresult HTML report contains quite a lot of useful information:
GPO’s application errors
Processing time in ms
Application of specific policies and CSE (that are located in Computer Details ⇒ Component Status)
As you can see, this HTML report is much more useful for analyzing the policies than the rsop.msc console.
How to Get GPResult Data from a Remote Computer
GPResult can also collect data from a remote computer, eliminating the need for the administrator to log on to the remote computer locally or via RDP. The syntax of the command to collect RSOP data from the remote computer is the following:
GPResult /s servername /r
Similarly, you can remotely collect data by both user and computer policies.
How to Get RSOP Data for a Certain User
When UAC is enabled, running GPResult without elevated privileges displays only the user’s group policy settings. If you want to display both settings at the same time (User and computer settings), you need to run the command with administrative privileges. If the cmd.exe with elevated privileges is run on an account that differs from the current system user, the utility will generate an INFO warning: The user “domain\user” does not have RSOP data. This happens because GPResult is trying to collect information for the user who started it, but because the user has not logged on, there is no RSOP information for him. To collect RSOP information for a user with an active session, you need to specify their account:
gpresult /r /user:domain\username
If you do not know the name of an account that is logged on to a remote computer, the account can be obtained this way:
qwinsta /SERVER:remotePCname
Also check the time (and time zone) on the client. The time must correspond to the time on the PDC (Primary Domain Controller).
Possible Reasons for GPOs to not Apply
While troubleshooting group policies, you should also take a look at the section: “The following GPOs were not applied because they were filtered out“. This section displays a list of GPOs do not apply to this object. Policy may not apply due to following options:
Filtering: Not Applied (Empty) – the policy is empty (there’s nothing to apply);
Filtering: Denied (Unknown Reason) – It is likely that the user or computer does not have permission to read/apply this policy. Permissions can be configured in the Security tab in the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC);
Filtering: Denied (Security) – the “Apply Group Policy” section has an explicit deny permission, or the AD object is not listed in the Security Filtering section of the GPO settings.
You can also understand whether the policy should apply or not to a specific AD object on the Advanced ⇒ Effective Access tab.
So, these are all options for the Group Policies diagnostic features using the GPResult utility.
How to Update Windows Group Policy on Domain Computers
In this article, we will take a look at the features of updating Group Policy settings on Active Directory domain computers:
Automatic Group Policy update interval
The GPUpdate command
Remote update via the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC.msc)
PowerShell Invoke-GPUpdate command
Group Policy Update Interval
In order for the new settings that you have defined in a Local or Domain Group Policy (GPO) to apply to clients, the Group Policy Client service must reload the policies and make changes to the client settings. This process is called updating Group Policies. Group Policy settings are updated when the computer boots up and the user logs on, or automatically in the background every 90 minutes plus random offset between 0 and 30 minutes (i.e., the policies are guaranteed to apply to clients between 90 and 120 minutes after the GPO files are updated on the domain controller).
Domain controllers by default update the GPO settings much more frequently – once every 5 minutes. You can change the refresh interval for GPO settings using the Set Group Policy refresh interval for computers option, which is located in the GPO Computer Configuration ⇒ Administrative Templates ⇒ System ⇒ Group Policy section. Enable the policy and set the time (in minutes) in the following settings:
This setting allows you to customize how often Group Policy is applied to computers (0 to 44640 minutes) – if you specify 0 here, the policies will start to update every 7 seconds – you should not do this
This is a random time added to the refresh interval to prevent all clients from requesting Group Policy at the same time (0 to 1440 minutes) – the maximum value of a random time interval that is added as an offset to the previous setting.
Set Group Policy Refresh Interval for Computers
Keep in mind that frequent GPO updates result in increased traffic to domain controllers and increased network load.
GPUpdate.exe – Group Policy Settings Update Command
All administrators are familiar with the gpupdate.exe command, which allows you to update group policy settings on your computer. Many of them do not hesitate to use the gpupdate /force command to update the GPO. This command forces the computer to reread all the policies from the domain controller and reapply all settings. The client accesses the domain controller, and receives ALL policies that are targeting it. This puts an increased load on the network and the domain controller.
A simple gpudate without /force key command applies only the new/changed GPO settings.
If all is OK when we update the GPO, the following lines should appear:
Updating policy…
Computer Policy Update has completed successfully.
User Policy Updating has completed successfully.
If any policies or settings have not applied, use the gpresult command to troubleshoot.
You can separately update GPO user settings by running the following command:
gpupdate /target:user
or just computer policies:
gpupdate /target:computer /force
If some policies cannot be updated in the background, gpudate can force the logoff of the current user:
gpupdate /target:user /logoff
Or reboot the computer (if the GPO changes can only be applied when Windows boots):
gpupdate /Boot
Force Update of Group Policy from the Group Policy Management Console
GPMC.msc (Group Policy Management Console), starting with Windows Server 2012, provides the ability to remotely update Group Policy settings on domain computers.
In Windows 10, you will need to install the RSAT component to use this console. In order to install it run the following command with administrator privileges:
Now, after changing the settings or creating and linking a new GPO, all you have to do is right click on the desired Organizational Unit (OU) in the GPMC and select Group Policy Update from the context menu. In the new window, you will see the number of computers that will update the GPO. Confirm the forced policy update by clicking Yes.
Group Policy Update via GPMC
Then, the GPO begin to update on each computer in the OU and you get a result with the status of the policy update on the computers (Succeeded/Failed).
This command remotely creates a scheduled task on the computers with the GPUpdate.exe /force command for each logged user. The task starts at a random time interval (up to 10 minutes) to reduce the network load.
The following conditions must be met for this GPMC functionality to work on the client:
TCP port 135 needs to be opened in Windows Firewall
Windows Management Instrumentation and Task Scheduler services must be enabled
If the computer is shut down or access to it is blocked by the firewall, the message “The remote procedure call was cancelled” will appear next to the computer name.
In a nutshell, this functionality would have the same effect if you had manually updated the policy settings on each computer with the GPUpdate /force command.
Group Policy Update with Invoke-GPUpdate Powershell Command
You can also trigger remote Group Policy updates on computers using the Invoke-GPUpdate PowerShell cmdlet (included in the RSAT). For example, you can use the command to remotely update user policies on a specific computer:
You can specify a random delay in updating a GPO using the RandomDelayInMinutes setting. In this case you can reduce the load on the network if you want to update policies on multiple computers at the same time. The RandomDelayInMinutes 0 setting is used to apply the policies immediately.
For inaccessible computers, the command will return the error:
Invoke-GPUpdate: Computer "spb-srv01" is not responding. The target computer is either turned off or Remote Scheduled Tasks Management Firewall rules are disabled.
When running the Invoke-GPUpdate command remotely or updating a GPO through the GPMC, a cmd window may briefly appear on the user’s monitor with the gpupdate command running.
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