If a machine is not applying group policy settings and a gpresult /force from an elevated command prompt returns the following message:
The processing of Group Policy failed. Windows could not apply the registry-based policy settings for the Group Policy object LocalGPO. Group Policy settings will not be resolved until this event is resolved. View the event details for more information on the file name and path that caused the failure.
User Policy update has completed successfully.
You will need to clear local group policy before the machine will process group policy. Run the following from an elevated command prompt:
RD /S /Q "%WinDir%\System32\GroupPolicyUsers" && RD /S /Q "%WinDir%\System32\GroupPolicy"
Once this is done, you should be able to successfully pull down policy with the following command in an elevated command prompt without receiving the original error:
GPUpdate /force