Windows – Stop automatic reboot with gpedit shutdown script in Windows 2k8

You could try turning on verbose Group Policy logging. Create the registry key:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Diagnostics

Underneath that key, create a REG_DWORD value named RunDiagnosticLoggingGlobal and set the value to 1.

That will enable verbose group policy logging to the Application Event Log.

The only timeout that Group Policy has that I'm aware of is the timeout for script execution. My gut would've said this was a shutdown script problem, but since you indicate there are no shutdown scripts being applied I guess I'd have to write that guess off.

You say "...that should be applied..." in reference to the shutdown scripts. Have you run an RSoP to be sure? Unless you're the only person managing the GPOs I don't know that I'd trust things to be left as you expect them.

How long is the hang, anyway? The default script timeout is 10 minutes. If you're seeing an exactly 10 minute hang then I'd be double and triple-checking that a shutdown script hasn't gotten assigned. To change that timeout, have a look at the "Maximum wait time for Group Policy scripts" setting in the "Scripts" sub-node of the "System" node of "Administrative Templates" in Group Policy.

A quick and dirty option would be to use PSSHUTDOWN in the PSTOOLS suite from Microsofts Sysinternals.

One of the switches available is -c. It allows the user to stop the reboot by pressing the Cancel button.

-c Allows the shutdown to be aborted by the interactive user.

You could set this to loop every X minutes until the user is ready to have their machine rebooted.

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A neater way to do this would be to write your own VBscript. This could provide a snazzy dialog box offering, for example, Yes and No. If they clicked No, it would sleep for X minutes before asking again. This would be very easy to write.

Edit: Well, I was bored so I made the script for you. Enjoy.

option explicit
on error resume next

Dim strComputer, intRebootChoice
Dim objWMIService, objOperatingSystem
Dim colOperatingSystems 

strComputer = "."

do while 1>0
 intRebootChoice = msgbox("OI, you, need to reboot.  Choose No to be asked again 1 hour",308,"Reboot incoming")
 select case intRebootChoice
  case 6
   Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate,(Shutdown)}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
   Set colOperatingSystems = objWMIService.ExecQuery ("Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem")
   For Each objOperatingSystem in colOperatingSystems
    ObjOperatingSystem.Reboot(1)
   Next
  case 7
   wscript.sleep(3600000)
  case else
   'shenanigans'
 end select
loop