SMSLS and Windows 2000 Group Policy

Goto the SMS Home Page

 
Has anyone tried running the "SMSLS" script via Windows 2000 Group Policy at User Logon instead of as a straight user logon script? It doesn't seem to work as advertised and there's not much to be found in the usual sources - documentation, Technet etc.

The script path doesn't seem to be right - the manual says you point it to the "Netlogon" share, but when you do a "View Files" it points to a different scripts directory under the "Policy" object, which of course is empty!

We tried to call the "SMSLS" script from a group policy, but had to abandon the attempt after discussing the situation with Microsoft. They said they were going to document it in a KB article, but I have never seen one. Here's the situation we saw:

  1. The Windows 2000 Group Policy processor process, which I believe is "USERINIT.EXE", starts up and begins to run the logon script.

  2. The logon script calls "SMSLS.BAT", which kicks off some additional SMS-related executables (e.g. "BOOT32WN.EXE") outside of the flow of the script.

  3. The logon script and the remainder of the group policy application completes, causing USERINIT to terminate, taking all child processes with it. Included in this: BOOT32WN or any of its spawned children, which effectively terminates the SMS client installation.

Want to see it actually work? Put a line in the logon script to pause it until the SMS pieces can finish - don't click "OK" until they do.

We now use an alternative method, independent of the Group Policy logon script (right now, we do it through a shortcut copied into the "
Startup" folder, but it does much more than SMS, so it was just a convenient place to anchor it).

As for the location of the script files, we have put ours into the "
NETLOGON" share, then just put the name of the script in the group policy. Interestingly, the Group Policy editor shows the path to the script being within the "SYSVOL" policy structure, even though it isn't there, and it does successfully run it from "NETLOGON".
 

© FAQShop.com 2003 - 2008

Goto the SMS Home Page

Email the Author