BESR 2010 MS policies not being updated

I am finding that when I change a backup policy, some of my servers are very slow to update. They are also very slow in sending back status information. This is especially troublesome as I have to change the start time of my backup jobs to avoid conflicts with BEWS backup jobs. It can take literally days for changes to be picked up by some of my servers.

Is there some way of speeding up the process? I have tried resetting the Altiris Agent, clicking the Update button in the Altiris agent settings, checking for new tasks. None of this seems to make any difference. I'd rather not have to reboot the servers if I can help it.