[SparkMonkeyHellion]

Hey guys, here's what I'm trying to figure out:

I want to run gpupdate every night and then download automatic updates and then shutdown.

I know that theoretically workstations should pull down policy every so often, but I don't trust it that much.

Also, despite having a GPO in place already that should download and prompt users to install and reboot - this just doesn't seem to happen for all users. I don't know why. A problem is that many of our users simply don't ever shut down or reboot.

And then, of course, for the sake of being green, I want to shut all workstations down in the evening after doing updates and then "wake up" every morning to be ready for users. Adding about 12 hours of downtime should cut the bills a bit - even though it is technically "off hours" when KW's cost less, but still. Every little bit helps, right?

I'm just trying to figure out the best way to go about each of these 3 components.

[Osiris]

Why would you want to run it EVERY night? Updates come out the 2nd Tuesday of each month. Is your corporate policy to disable automatic updates via CP? We use WSUS to deploy the updates but I go that extra step and use Automatic Updates. If I just used WSUS, we wouldn't be on SP3, possibly SP2.

I'd have to find it again but you can force computers to shutdown after a certain amount of time.

The turning on, turning off, turning off debate is a tough one. Some say wear and tear on the hardware, some say it saves $$, either way they are correct.

Shutdown meaning totally powered off or Standby? The only way to wake them up is if their computers can be controlled by IP, like a KVM and LightsOut or Wake on LAN if the computer supports it, etc

[SparkMonkeyHellion]

Yeah, for the GPUPDATE thing - I actually found that there is a policy which you can change to tell the computers when/how often to check for policy changes. Which is currently not configured. So right now our machines are only getting policy updates when they reboot.

maybe it will be enough to just force shutdowns...

Still i want to insure that all updates are installed... could I make a script that just runs "wuauclt /detectnow" - would that actually install any updates that are out there?

[Osiris]

You need to go Here and then Here

Should be what you are asking for

[SparkMonkeyHellion]

That's pretty cool stuff. Though like I said we don't want our policy to be too aggressive because that will agitate our users. We don't like agitated users.

For the Scheduled Shutdown thing I have come up with 2 solutions which will be discussed at the meeting tomorrow.

1) a single script - scheduled to run from a server which remotely shuts down each PC by name. I have found a handy way to produce these kinds of scripts relatively quickly (using exported CSV from AD) - this is a simple and powerful solution.

2) using a GPO and/or script to install a Scheduled Task on each PC to be shut down - I have created a Scheduled Task on my PC which performs the desired shutdown - and the file exists on my C:\WINDOWS\Tasks folder. The file is about ½ KB and can be remotely installed.

Both have advantages and disadvantages... so we'll see what happens!

[Osiris]

Well let us know how it goes