Debugging Group Policy

Not entirely sure what is happening with the preferences you are setting in Group Policy?  You can enable Group Policy "Logging and Tracing" which should give you a better idea.

The settings can be found in Group Policy Editor, under:
Computer Configuration\Policies\Administrative Templates\System\Group Policy

Enable whichever policy settings you require

Reboot the machine and log on

Logs can be found in the following locations:
User trace %COMMONAPPDATA%\GroupPolicy\Preference\Trace\User.log
Computer trace %COMMONAPPDATA%\GroupPolicy\Preference\Trace\Computer.log
Planning trace %COMMONAPPDATA%\GroupPolicy\Preference\Trace\Planning.log

Domain Controller Replication

When setting up a domain, you really should check that all domain controllers are replicating successfully.  It is also useful to check this when troubleshooting domain related problems too, just in case a DC is out of sync.

At the command prompt, on the DC you are checking, type:
    repadmin /showrepl

That's it!
Obviously there is a bit more to this command.  For instance, to check the replication status of a different domain controller, you would use:
    repadmin /showrepl <servername> /u:<domain name>\<username> /pw:*