If you are like me you probably had a bash script with Ps Exec from Sysinternals, a Power Shell script that created a process with WMI or use Invoke-Command with Power Shell remoting.
As you can see there are many ways to achieve this but the simplest I have found using command line using Invoke-GPUpdate.
Group policy will apply if it is a domain account, regardless of physical connection to the network that the domain resides on.
Try logging in as the local administrator and see if that alleviates the problem. I have a Windows 8 laptop physically removed from the domain, re-assigned to a local workgroup, the domain user account deleted, and am logged in as a local admin.
In Group Policy, one of the key components is the registry client-side extension, which makes changes to the Group Policy Objects (GPOs) in the local computers' registries.