Can I issue the GROUPS RELOAD command external to SYSVIEW and have an Empty function for the Groups command?
There is no way to perform the GROUPS RELOAD command external to SYSVIEW. This can only be performed from within SYSVIEW. With regard to the deletions that you are seeing still show up after performing the COLD reload of the groups member, the reload function does not delete or empty the current set of definitions prior to attempting the load. It will add your new additions, but will not delete the existing definitions when you have deleted them from parmlib.
To correct this you can either cycle SYSVIEW to pick up the parmlib change, or from the Groups display screen, you can issue the following command prior to performing the Groups reload:
linecmd del 2-9999
This will delete everything in the GROUPS and then issue the Reload COLD to reload your Group definitions with your changes.