Important disclaimer:
This FAQ entry
relates to Microsoft products. As they are not our own
products and we offer this information solely as a courtesy, as-is,
with no guarantees or warranties whatsoever. These are not our
products or scripts or fixes, so we are not supporting then nor
guaranteeing they work.
If
you have a support agreement via TechNet, MSDN or license
subscriptions, go there first for assistance from Microsoft
directly.
A very quick solution - disable UAC (User Account
Control) on your PCs. Problem solved. Of course some of
you may actually like UAC and consider it a good thing to have.
If you're one of these, then you probably need this solution.
Microsoft changed some things starting with Vista that can affect you as regards
logon scripts, be they batch files or VB Script due to how UAC interacts with
logon scripts.
This is all part of understanding what's at stake as you transition away from
XP and we can't support Microsoft products, however we've found the key points
for you to be able to get your logon script working.
In a nutshell, scripts run with the lowest
privileges and as such what you would imagine would work, as you've
got all your permissions correct and so forth, fail anyway - and
silently at that.
-
This lengthy Microsoft document explains how UAC can
affect Group Policy script - as much as such an unbelievable situation
can be "explained":
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766208(WS.10).aspx
Look for the section "Group Policy Scripts can fail due to User Account
Control"
extracted
here for your convenience
-
Microsoft's solution is to add a script to
your Group Policy that runs a task at each user's PC when it logs in to
allow scripts to actually work.
It's on the TechNet page linked above under Appendix A. Look for launchapp.wsf.
-
Out of the woods? Not so fast. If a PC has a regular User
log into it and also someone that's an Admin (and what machine would not?)
then the official Microsoft fix doesn't work.
Enter an alternative
a launchapp.wsf that addresses the problem of multi-user PCs with mixed
User and Admin users.
Please check with Microsoft for any questions or
support related to these issues.
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