Restarting PWB as a Shell

GregP · Post by **GregP** » Mon Apr 21, 2003 10:32 pm

Hi Everyone,

At the moment I have a PC set up using PWB as the windows shell. I am trying to set up the computer so that when PWB is shutdown it will logoff.

I know we can prevent PWB being shutdown anyway, but if I can get this setup working it would be my prefered option.

At the moment I am investigating some small freeware programs which can detect when a process ends and perform the logoff, but the logistics this involves for our setup are giving me a headache.

Having just got back from holidays, I wanted to take the easier approach and ask everyone whether they have a simpler solution before I give myself a brain hemorrhage.

I'm running NT4 sp6, IE6 and PWB1.28

PS. I thought I read (perhaps I'm wrong) that PWB2 can run shutdown scripts...? Can it perform admin tasks like this, or would it have to run a script that calls on a third party program to perform the logoff?

Post by **Scott** » Tue Apr 22, 2003 10:59 am

You should be able to use Auto Logon from TSS. If you run Auto Logon from the startup script, when you close PWB, NT will logoff and auto logon rerunning the startup script and thus Auto Logon.

PWB v2 does have a shutdown script. The script is a batch file that can do anything a batch file can do.

--Scott

GregP · Post by **GregP** » Thu Apr 24, 2003 12:40 am

Thanks for the reply.

I had overlooked Auto Logon as we are using registry settings to perform most of what it does anyway. I've had a look at the blurb on the web site and the readme file and neither mentions this other feature, maybe its worth updating those?

I'll try it out next week.

Thanks again.

GregP · Post by **GregP** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 3:16 am

Hi Scott,

I've tried Auto Logon and it doesn't seem to do anything. I've run "autologon setup" from the command prompt and fed in the necessary values (I'm assuming they will just overide the existing registry vaules) and run 'autologon.exe' every boot.

When PWB gets closed I still get left with a blank desktop. From here I can press Ctrl-Alt-Del to logoff, but I want to automate that.

Just to clarify, I assume when you say "If you run Auto Logon from the startup script..." you mean run at boot time by NT as opposed to some startup script within PWB?

Are there any privileges the user requires for this function to work? I added autologon.exe to the RestrictRun key in the registry but I'm not sure if it requires any other system programs...

I'm, sorry to ask so many questions at once, but is there any more documention on this function of Auto Logon or any examples that other people have running?

And last.... what is Auto Logon actually doing in this case? (just as background knowledge for me) Is it watching for the publicbrowser.exe process to end?

Thanks,
Greg

Post by **Scott** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 11:33 am

My fault I was thinking of a terminal server and thin clients. When using PWB as the shell on a thin client via a terminal server closing PWB logs off the computer.

With PWB v2 you can use the shutdown script and the MS Logoff.exe application to have PWB logoff when it is closed. I know that will not help for PWB v1, but it is an option if you upgrade.

The Auto Logon application modifies the appropiate registry keys to enable Windows Auto Logon.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
\TeamSoftware Solutions\AutoLogon
AutoAdminLogon
DefaultDoamin
DefaultPassword
DefaultUserName
DialogDelay
ForceAutoLogon

\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
AutoAdminLogon
DefaultDoamin
DefaultPassword
DefaultUserName
DialogDelay
ForceAutoLogon