Logging in and batch files

LeperKing

I've got a NAS on my small home network now, and I want to start trying to get each windows client set up the same way.

I'm considering having a batch file on NAS that when a user logs in the batch file would execute.

I'm wondering in where windows setup can I do this, and how much power has a batch file.

Examples...
Check what services are running, and change their attributes.
Check registry settings are the same across each PC.
Allow programs to update themselves.
Maintenance programs like disk cleanup, spyware can be executed in the background.
etc etc

Thanks,
LK.

P.S. I'm assuming all are windows XP professional installations.

SouperComputer

SAMBA with as a setup as a domain controller would be best with logon scripts.

What are you using as a NAS?

LeperKing

SouperComputer wrote:

SAMBA with as a setup as a domain controller would be best with logon scripts.

What are you using as a NAS?

Its samba, but no domain controller and I don't have access to the smb.conf.
The NAS is Asus WL-700gE.

LK

seamus

Are the client OSes XP Home or XP Pro? You could specify the scripts as logon scripts individually on each machine through group policy (although you don't have to sit at each machine to do it).

LeperKing

seamus wrote:

Are the client OSes XP Home or XP Pro? You could specify the scripts as logon scripts individually on each machine through group policy (although you don't have to sit at each machine to do it).

XP Pro. I don't mind setting the login script for each client. I'm curious can everything be altered through a batch file.

LK

seamus

LeperKing wrote:

XP Pro. I don't mind setting the login script for each client. I'm curious can everything be altered through a batch file.

LK

Depends on what you mean by "everything".

If you're looking to do this to get yourself some good experience, then have a look at the Windows Scripting Host. For all intents and purposes, it's shell scripting for Windows, using VBScript. It's actually quite simple, and there are thousands of MB of resources online for it.
It's far far superior to batch files and you can pretty much do anything to a Windows machine with it.

LeperKing

I'll look into windows scripting. Does the user account have to have administrator privileges for it's logon script to function correctly?

LK

seamus

LeperKing wrote:

I'll look into windows scripting. Does the user account have to have administrator privileges for it's logon script to function correctly?

LK

Logon scripts act with the priviledges of the user who's logged in. Startup scripts run with the priviledges of the SYSTEM user, i.e. the highest possible priviledge. So the script will only fail to function correctly if you ask it to do something it can't.

Capt'n Midnight

for most versions of windows add a one line batch file to the startup group

if exist \\server\netlogon\logon.bat \\server\netlogon\logon.bat

the if exist speeds it up when you can't see \\server but you may have to drop it if using windows 3.x

LeperKing

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

for most versions of windows add a one line batch file to the startup group

When you say 'startup group' what do you mean?

Also it seems it you can use VBScript or JScript. Is there really no difference?

I might go through the JScript route as I'm more familar with Java.

LK

seamus

LeperKing wrote:

When you say 'startup group' what do you mean?

I think he means in the list of startup scripts - you can specify multiple scripts to run at logon/startup.

Also it seems it you can use VBScript or JScript. Is there really no difference?

Not really. You probably know this already, but JScript is only similar to Java in syntactical terms, otherwise it's completely different. JScript is MS's implementation of Javascript.