windowspowershellgroup-policy

GPUdate PS Commandlet

I'm having an issue with this script. For some reason, it was working previously and now it is not. It is now returning with:

Invoke-GPUpdate : The term 'Invoke-GPUpdate' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

Write-Host "Refreshing Group Policies on the local machine......."

Invoke-GPUpdate -Computer $computer -RandomDelayInMinutes 0 -force ForegroundColor Cyan

Start-Sleep -s 20

Solution

  • Invoke-GPUpdate is part of the GroupPolicy module. GroupPolicy is not available by default, but is included with RSAT Tools. What likely happened is a major update to Windows occurred and in this case, if RSAT Tools isn't installed as a Windows Feature (it is only available as a "Feature on Demand" beginning with the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, which is build 17763), it will get removed during the update and needs to be re-installed.

    This technically happens with the feature as well I believe, as RSAT Tools is still linked to specific versions of Windows, but the upgrade process will re-install the feature if it was already present.

    Installing GroupPolicy RSAT Tools as a feature with Windows PowerShell

    If you have Windows 1809 or newer, you can install as a feature using the following command:

    Get-WindowsCapability -Name 'Rsat.GroupPolicy.*' -Online | Where-Object { $_.State -ne 'Installed' } | Add-WindowsCapability -Online

    You can do the same with other RSAT Tools as well (the features are modularized per their functionality). To enumerate all of them:

    Get-WindowsCapability -Name RSAT*

    Once again, this requires Windows 1809 or newer or the features will be unavailable. You'll have to install it by using the MSU provided by Microsoft for your Windows version.