XP Workstations skipping Group Policy Software Installation

I was required to setup serveral Windows XP workstations for a client, which required me to join them to the domain. I noticed upon moving the workstations into the correct OU on the server that, after a GPUPDATE /FORCE and reboot they would just skip over the software installation policies deployed from the server.

Cut a long story short the problem was with the group policy time out. A simple reg hack did the trick, which i rolled out through a startup script.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"GpNetworkStartTimeoutPolicyValue"=dword:0000003c