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