Is GPUPDATE /boot still bugged?

Question

Years ago during COVID I was working as a temp imaging laptops with Win10 and asked about gpupdate /boot being bugged. I haven't needed the "/boot" option since early 2021.

Now I've been doing some work as a field service tech for another company and was setting up some new systems that had Win11 preimaged with a list of instructions.

Part of the instructions were to join to the domain, run a couple scripts/installers and then execute "gpupdate /force" before rebooting when finished. As it took several minutes for GPUPDATE to work and I had multiple computers to set up in that office, I thought I could be clever and use "gpupdate /force /boot" so it would reboot automatically while I worked on setting up another system, saving me an interruption and step.

However instead all I got was the success message and the command prompt remained open.

I know, I should have done "gpupdate /force && shutdown -r -t 1", but apparently "gpupdate /force /boot" has been bugged since at least Win10 back in late 2020.

It seems odd that the option would still be listed in Win11 (I checked) if it doesn't work. Does nobody look at the parameters? I did submit to the feedback hub back in February of 2021 about it and now we have Win11, a whole new OS. Honestly I don't recall it working on clients since I was doing XP->7 migrations 10 years ago.

So any ideas why the /boot parameter seems to do nothing?

Answer 1

Hello,

Thank you for posting your question on Microsoft Windows forum!

Based on your query of why the /boot parameter seems to do nothing, the possible explanation is of that /boot parameter in gpupdate doesn't actually trigger an immediate reboot. What it does is signal that "Group Policy should initiate a reboot when one is required", such as after certain policy changes that necessitate it—but it won't force a restart on its own.

In fact, the vast majority of cases, policies like software installations or specific security changes might require a reboot, and that's where /boot parameter comes into play. It ensures that, if a restart is needed, it happens automatically. However, if none of the applied policies require a reboot, nothing happens, which is likely what you encountered.

Since you're looking for a way to automate rebooting after gpupdate. You can try to run the following command.

• gpupdate /force & shutdown /r /t 0 This will force the Group Policy update and immediately restart the machine.

Hope the above information is helpful!