Windows Start Up Messages

One of the things I don’t like about Windows 7 is that it lacks any kind of start up messages, for my domain users.  When they boot up their computer all they see is “Please Wait”  I have had users think that their computer was frozen and pull the plug on it when actually it was installing a software patch via group policy.  But I found an easy fix for this in group policy.

The setting is found under Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / System / Verbose vs Normal Status Messages
By enabling this setting you will get descriptive messages when your domain computers boot up and shut down.  I have found that it gets a little too descriptive on XP machines, but I would rather have too much info than not enough.

Resetting Forgotten Windows Passwords

Occasionally I will have a person bring me a computer with a password protected user account that they don’t know the password to.  There is commercial software that you can purchase to reset the password but why pay for it if you don’t have to.

Windows Reset Disk

Windows 7 offers you a way to reset your password using a password reset disk.  The only problem with this is that you have to have made the disk prior to forgetting the password.  Who plans for that?  But if you did plan ahead good for you.

Offline Password Reset

Now the majority of people who didn’t plan ahead.  There is a program called Offline NT Password Registry Editor.  You can download a reset CD from them directly or you can also acquire the program with the Hiren Boot CD.  I use the Hirens Boot CD

  1. Boot your computer using the Hirens Boot CD
  2. Select Offline NT Password Changer
  3. After it is loaded the first prompt will ask you to select a partition.  You need to select the partition where windows is installed. IF your are unsure try picking the largest partition
  4. You will need to select the directory path to your windows registry.  The program will check to see if it can find the path to you registry files.  If it does, it will default to that partition.  You can usually just enter through this.  I find that if it could not find the path you have selected the wrong partition.
  5. Next you need to select “Password Reset”.
  6. You will now want to select “Edit User Data and Passwords”
  7. The program will list all of the users that it finds. You can just type in the name of the user that you want to edit.
  8. You will be given a few choice once you select a user.  I have had some problems trying to edit the users password, especially in Windows 7, so I usually clear (blank) out the users password.
  9. After clearing out the password you will need save the registry changes.
  10. You can now remove the boot CD from your computer and restart.  The computer should automatically boot up and move right to the desktop.  If not you might have to type in the username your cleared out and log in with no password.
  11. Once you have logged in you can go to the control panel and select user accounts.  From there you can create a new password for your account.

Installing Adobe Flash Using Group Policy

Downloading The MSI’s

Before you can download the full installation msi files you must sign up with Adobe to distribute Flash.  This is free and relatively easy to do so.  At the time of this posting this was the link used to sign up.
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=distribution_form&pv=rdr
After you sign up Adobe will send you a link to the full install files.

There are 2 types of installation.  If you are only going to be running Internet Explorer on your machines you only need to download the Active X version.  You will need to download the plugin version if you are running browsers like Firefox and Chrome.

Editing The MSI’s

The msi files can be edited using Orca.  I have not tested any of the switches at this time.

Deploying Via Group Policy (GPO)

Now you are ready to deploy the package via Group Policies. The general process is to do the following:

  1. Create new GPO (or use existing GPO for same software title)
  2. Copy the install files to a network share
  3. Add MSI package
  4. Add MST transforms file (note you can only do this at the beginning, and it cannot be changed later).

Turning Off Auto Update

You can turn off the auto update by editing or creating the mmc.cfg file.  The file is located in different spots depending on you OS.  For Windows 32 bit OS’s it will be located in the C:WINDOWSSystem32MacromedFlash directory.  For Windows 64 bit OS’s It will be located in both the C:WINDOWSSystem32MacromedFlash and the C:WINDOWSSysWOW64MacromedFlash directories.

The mmc.cfg file I created has the following entries.
AutoUpdateDisable=1  <– “1” turns off the AutoUpdate
SilentAutoUpdateEnable=0  <–  “0” Leaves Silent off “1” Turns it on

The file must be saved using UTF-8 encoding
The file is created automatically if you install Flash using the .exe installer.  If the .msi installer is used the file will not be created.  Be aware that if you have modified the file and update your Flash using the .exe installer, your modified file will be overwritten.

I decided I didn’t want to manually copy the file so I created a startup script that copies the file for me.  I read that a logon script does not work because users may not have permissions to copy the files.  Here is what my startup script looks like.

Set oFSO = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
sNetworkFlashPath = “\SERVERpathmms.cfg”
sLocalFlashPath = “C:WINDOWSSystem32MacromedFlashmms.cfg”
sLocalFlashPath64 = “C:WINDOWSSysWOW64MacromedFlashmms.cfg”

If oFSO.FolderExists (“C:WINDOWSSystem32MacromedFlash”) Then
oFSO.CopyFile sNetworkFlashPath, sLocalFlashPath, True

End If

If oFSO.FolderExists (“C:WINDOWSSysWOW64MacromedFlash”) Then
oFSO.CopyFile sNetworkFlashPath, sLocalFlashPath64, True

End If

Set oFSO = Nothing

I put this startup script in my GPO that deploys the Flash software.

Installing Java Using Group Policy

Download Java

You need to download the full offline installation package.  As of the time of this post the link is
http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

Extracting The MSI

Double click on the EXE file and leave the installation window open.

Now while that window is still open open up Windows Explorer and go to the below location and you will see the CAB and MSI files that are needed to deploy via GPO.

1 C:Users%username%AppDataLocalLowSunJavajre1.6.0_26

Note: You need to keep the setup window open for 64bit version because it removes the temp files when you cancel the install process. 32 bit doesn’t but its good practice.

Copy these files to your distribution location (or your staging area where you can modify the file using ORCA)

Modifying The MSI

So now we need to make some changes to the Java MSI installation so that it installs correctly and does not try to auto update seeing as most admins don’t give their users local admin rights. The tool that I use is ORCA, and is available for download from the Microsoft website.

Here are some common properties you can modify.  I have found that changing the update settings work, but if you check in the control panel, it appears as if nothing has changed.

Table Property Original Value Proposed Value Description
Property JAVAUPDATE 1 0 All three need to be changed to completely disable Java automatic updates
Property AUTOUPDATECHECK 1 0
Property JU 1 0
Property IEXPLORER 0 1 Activates Internet Explorer plugin
Property MOZILLA 0 1 Activates Mozilla plugin
Property SYSTRAY 1 0 Disables system tray icon when Java applets are active
Property RebootYesNo Yes No Suppresses the need to reboot – not affected by GPO that I’m aware of but does when installed manually.
Property EULA 0 1 I leave this setting to 0, however if you are installing it via the msiexec through cmd prompt you may need to set this to 1 to install without interuptions.

Once you have made the changes you are happy with you can simply save the changes to a MST (transforms) file. The transforms file simply tells the MSI to use its preferred settings, and the benefit is you can have one MSI to multiple MST files.

NOTE: if you wanted to use a transforms file, you need to create a transforms in ORCA first by clicking Transform -> New Transform, and then when you are finished you need to go to Transform -> Generate Transform.

Deploying Via Group Policy (GPO)

Now you are ready to deploy the package via Group Policies. The general process is to do the following:

  1. Create new GPO (or use existing GPO for same software title)
  2. Copy the install files to a network share
  3. Add MSI package
  4. Add MST transforms file (note you can only do this at the beginning, and it cannot be changed later).