I have a little network of a couple of machines at home, and I need to shutdown them at a certain hour.
I found out that Windows 7 from Pro upwards offers a graphical Security Policies editor, where it's possible to allow the remote shutdown, but apart from mine, the other PCs have just Home Premium, which doesn't have the editor.
I found out that the key is editable without the need of the editor, but how, and where do I find it?
Or, are there any other ways? Thanks for the help.
I have never done what you are trying to do in regards to remote shutdown, but here is some information that may be useful:
Are you using the group policy editor for Windows 7 Pro? I believe that's gpedit.msc, right? Back in the day it used to be that you could use regmon (a Sysinternals program) to monitor registry keys that are changed, but it looks like Microsoft bought out Sysinternals and then retired Regmon. However, I believe they moved the functionality to Process Explorer (edit: turns out it's Process Monitor):
Monitor: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645
Explorer: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653
On your Windows 7 Pro machine run process monitor and set it up to monitor registry changes for gpedit.msc. Then change the setting using the program. Once you have the key you can document it or export it using regedit. I'm not sure how you plan on changing the registry key remotely, though.
Related
When I do a system restore in Windows 10 1607 (Anniversary Update), I get this error:
Based on the error, it looks like Windows Defender isn't playing well with System restore -- and lo and behold, when I disable Windows Defender, the System Restore works!
However, I don't have the option to remove Windows Defender -- the clients don't want that.
This is not an uncommon problem, and there are a few solutions out there.
Here's what I've tried:
(1)
The error says "System Restore could not access a file." Maybe the problem is that a file is corrupted? Windows Defender touches every file (I think), and maybe when it touches the corrupted file, it passes out like a scared goat.
So I ran the utility "System File Checker", but it didn't find any corrupted files. Can I trust the utility?
(2)
Success with this problem was found by turning off something called App & Browser control. The problem here is that I can't do that, because that's in the Defender Security Center, which isn't on the Anniversary Update (1607), it's on the Creator's Update (1709).
It seems that Windows Defender isn't near as configurable in 1607 than in 1709, and clients also don't want to update to 1709. OUCH. Am I missing a Windows Defender configuration that allows System Restore in 1607? I see that you can get it to not touch certain files or folders, but I don't know what file/folder System Restore would be in, as it's not really a file.
(3)
Write a script that temporarily disables Windows Defender. I actually haven't tried this because I'm not sure where to start. I would insert the script into my program, which is in C#. It would go like this:
turn off Windows Defender
run the code that does the restore point, and after it's done and the machine is restarted,
turn Windows Defender back on.
After all that, here are some specific questions:
(1) how to write a script that toggles Windows Defender
(2) is there a way to configure Windows Defender in 1607 such that it allows System Restore to work?
(3) any other ideas would be appreciated.
My hard drive is at 100% in Task Manager.
I disabled Windows Search and Superfetch and hard drive is still at 100%.
I am using Windows 10.
Any suggestions would be helpful.
Update: Task Manager won't show what process is clogging up hard drive at 100%.
Task Manager won't show any processes that use up a lot of percentage of hard drive.
I suggest you see the processes tab and see if any process that might be using maximum read/writes in your hard drive.
Disable Indexing service that sometimes use more resources. Disable any startup process that might be using your system resources.
Windows + R -> Run Menu -> Type: msconfig and see any startup process that you can disable. Disable any program that seems suspicious.
You can try some other repair methods like:
Perform a diskcheck
Reset Virtual Memory
Disable Antivirus Software temporarily
Change the settings in Google & Skype
Fix your StorAHCI.sys driver
Update your device drivers
Win10 100% disk usage
I had the same issue on my WINDOWS 10 system and I tried a lot of things like turning off the search indexing feature of windows but nothing worked using all that. Here is what worked for me. I opened the task manager and found that there was a task with Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry (CompatTelRunner.exe). It is a Windows process that is designed to collect and send usage and performance data to Microsoft. The executable file collects and regularly sends usage and performance information to Microsoft in order to analyze the user experience and improve it. The described file also helps Microsoft to identify compatibility issues and ensure compatibility when installing the latest Windows OS version. However, Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry eats CPU by scanning computer files and check their compatibility with Windows 10 in case an update is initiated.
I simply clicked on End Task for Microsoft Compatibility Telemetry and my disk usage went from 98% to 15% within few seconds. I hope it helps others experiencing the same issue as well.
I had the same issue with windows 10 on Laptop.
I set the windows update service from automatic to manual.
Now i am always under 5%.
Click on administrative tools in control panel
Then click on Services
set windows update to manual.
Had the same problem for months. Desactivated SrTasks.exe and it started working.
However this task is clearly something important, so I think it's not recommanded to stop it.
Like some cyber coffee applications that disables the user ability to use any other application but only the ones started inside that cyber admin application panel, I searched the Internet for some way of doing it in Delphi:
Remove the Windows Task bar;
Disable the Alt+Tab function;
Disable the Task Manager;
Be able to do/undo that changes in a configuration panel.
These needs are for keeping users from downloading viruses and making changes to Windows configuration or even play games, if it is the system administrator's preference. The own program would serve as a container for authorized applications to run inside then as if it were a MDI application. That is already working
Of course that the system manager will have the options to disable that or revert.
Is there a way to make those four configurations in run-time with Delphi XE3?
I'm not familiar with Delphi. I'm also not sure if it is possible during run-time. But you could do the following:
Write to the registry to prevent alt-tab see this.
Again write to the registry to disable Task Manager see this.
Sounds like you can disable the task bar too by the registry see this.
On your control panel have options and when they hit save, save and restart the computer.
This is provided that Delphi can write to the registry (I believe C# and C++ can). If not, you could create .reg files and execute those by calling cmd.exe with arguments. This I think will cause some pop-ups though.
Update: You may be able to load in the registry changes without a signing out by killing explorer.exe and then loading it again. This may only load parts of the updated registry though.
I'd suggest booting your hardware into Linux, and then run a Windows virtual machine that is as locked down as possible using the existing kiosk mode security settings in Windows. This VM then runs your MDI application when the VM boots. When the MDI application exists the VM reverts to a snapshot of the known good Windows configuration.
You strip down a Linux OS to include only the bare minimum components needed to host your Windows VM.
I'm assuming your MDI windows will only host applications your organization has written, not arbitrary Windows executables. Otherwise you are asking to re-write Windows itself, which will prove impossible.
A colleague has a batch script program which needs to to run on a Windows Server in console mode, so that it has access to a Windows interactive session. The server is rebooted at regular intervals automatically (there's an unrelated closed-source application that runs on this machine that we have no control over). After a reboot he wants to automatically start a Windows interactive session and have this script run, plus the service needs to also have access to network resources (CIFS drives, in particular).
Here's what we've tried so far:
Start as Windows service. This failed, since a Windows service can either have access to interactive session or to network resources, but never both.
Used Microsoft management console to add the script to run at startup, however this did not work.
Used an HKLM registry key to start to run this script, however it only gets started when we manually open a remote desktop session on the server.
Creating a scheduled task. The program invoked did not have access to interactive windows session.
Any other suggestions? (Or maybe he missed something when he set up one of these suggestions?)
In case "Interact with desktop" on the service is not enough (I have seen a handful of cases where it is not), you can combine it with AutoAdminLogon. Create three (or four for a domain) REG_SZ values under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon:
DefaultUsername
DefaultPassword
DefaultDomain
AutoAdminLogon
AutoAdminLogon should be set to the string "1", the others are self-explanatory.
Obviously this has security issues big enough to fly Jupiter through.
Have you tried having your script run as a Windows service, but allowing it to interact with the desktop?
Specifically:
Go to the service properties page
Click on the "Log On" tab
Select "Local System account"
Check "Allow service to interact with desktop"
See my similar question and real answer to it: How to start a process from windows service into currently logged in user's session
NOTE: "Interact with desktop" checkbox is not enough at all.
I recommend going about this another way. You could build another Windows app that communicates via IPC to the Windows Service and that could be what deals with the closed souorce application. But if you must, you can specify an option in the service (you can do this through MMC, registry, etc). Basically, you can see this option by going to Computer Management->Services and Applications->Services->Right click your service->Change account to Local System and check "Allow system to interact with desktop."
However, again, I recommend choosing another path.
I had to do something similar recently; a route that I found but discarded due to security concerns is to have the interactive service set self as running in interactive mode and then run the ImpersonateUser function in the win32 API, which I think will provide the benefits of both a user and the interactive session available from the LocalSystem.
Needless to say, if someone broke into a service that did that, they would have total control of the machine.
I have an application for Windows XP. This application is deployed with the hardware. The application is the only application that ever runs on these machines. These machines are never connected to the internet. I'm interested in instant-on (or quick-on) options that bypass the Windows XP startup for these machines.
This is similar to Windows XP "hibernation", but not exactly. With hibernation, the memory state is only read from disk once - the very next time the system is turned on. I want a memory state permanently stored to disk, so the system always starts from that same spot every time, regardless of how it was shut down. How can I achieve this?
Sounds like you're looking for the Hibernate Once, Resume Many feature of Windows Embedded.
If you like "hibernation", you may use VMWare.
Install a ArchLinux and VMWare on the host machines.
Prepare your Windows XP as the guest OS.
Customize startup process of the host, let it run VMWare and restore Windows to the snapshot.
Hmmm, the short answer is "not easily!", but one way could be to try playing around with replacing the windows shell with your own application / script that launches your own custom interface / state instead of Explorer as the default. Basically it's done using this reg key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\shell
Info on this actually seems to be reasonably scarce after doing a quick Google search, but this link below provides a little more detail:
http://www.trap17.com/index.php/how-change-windows-xp-shell_t20367.html
I think if you do a Google Groups search on "Windows XP shell replacement" you might get some more informative results.
You could try installing TweakUI on them, and having them autologin. Once you do that, just add your application to the Start Up menu (or in the registry, under:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Jeff Atwood has a post on this very thing.