Cannot "see" Downclock messages on XP.

[sheres54tea]

It appears that I can run Downclock on an XP computer, as it shuts down at the designated time (10 mins). But the timer or warning boxes do not appear at all.

Updated: April 29: It appears that this started happening AFTER this weeks round of MS updates. Anyone else ecounter this?
Any ideas?

Simon

[Scott]

We have tested DownClock on Windows Vista and it seems to work as expected.

Ensure the user has access to the DownClock files.

--Scott

[sheres54tea]

My staff has observed the following:
Downclock works on Vista, if you run it locally the countdown appears and shuts down the computer. The issue we previously discussed is how Vista runs system processes. When Vista runs a system process is run this process at session 0. Previous to Vista the current user logged in also ran at session 0. For security reasons Microsoft made users run at session 1 with all system processes still at 0. When the system process requires some kind of interaction, like displaying the countdown timer or an error message MS wrote in a program to temporarily switch to session 0 to view the message and then switch back to the user session which is session 1. Even if you do not run Downclock with the psexec -s argument (for system process) it still does not show up. Downclock runs as a process under the local user but does not message the user.

The issue appears to be Downclock with the combination of psexec, not simply Downclock.

[Scott]

The issue seems to be start a remote process in the current user session. You may have better luck "pushing" DownClock to the target computer, and using "psexec" to start a small batch file that then starts DownClock.

--Scott

[sheres54tea]

Downclock is already on the local machine. We've also already attempted your suggestion of calling another local .bat file, but the same thing happens.

This is the current .bat we run on our network server to run downclock on all of our machines:

c:\psexec \\lan1 -s -i -d c:\Downclock\10endday\DownClock.exe

Any other suggestions?

[Scott]

Have you tried running a batch file on the local computer that starts DownClock instead a batch file that starts the DownClock process on the network computer?

c:\psexec \\lan1 -s -i -d c:\Downclock\10endday\rundc.cmd

A batch file that runs a batch file that starts DownClock.

You could also try scheduling a batch file using the AT command.
Something similar to the following.

Code: Select all

AT \\computer 10:10 /interactive c:\Downclock\10endday\DownClock.exe

--Scott

[sheres54tea]

I tired using a local batch file called rundc.bat with the contents:

Code: Select all

 c:\downclock\10endday\downclock.exe 

I also tried:

Code: Select all

 psexec -i -d c:\downclock\10endday\downclock.exe 

Then I thought I was cleaver and would use runas to get downclock running at session 1. I found a vb script which does a runas command with out having to manually enter the password into a command prompt so the batch script for the script was called run.bat and looked like this:

Code: Select all

 c:\downclock\10endday\vbrunas.vbs "currentuser" "password" c:\downclock\10endday\rundc.bat 

Which I used to call both versions of the rundc.bat that I described above. I also tried each version of rundc as a bat file and as a cmd file.

None of this worked. If I double-click either the bat or cm versions of rundc or run everything worked fine and downclock came up on the user desktop but if you use psexec from a remote machine it triggers the Interactive Services dialog box and forces manual interaction to view the session 0 desktop which downclock is running on.

Even the AT command triggers the Interactive services dialog box.

How are other people running downclock on Vista?

[Scott]

Using the Windows Vista Task Scheduler DownClock works as expected.

It seems like the issue is with trying to run DownClock from a remote computer and Windows Vista and not with DownClock itself. So the trick will be to find how to run any application in the current session interactively from a remote computer on Vista.

[sheres54tea]

c:\psexec \\lan1 -s -i -d c:\Downclock\10endday\DownClock.exe

We cannot get the message or warning boxes to show up on our XP PCs.

As of a few days ago it was working. I cannot figure out why it doesn't now. We recently upgraded to 2008 servers but even then they worked up until a few days ago. PCs shut down at specified time but no warnings.

Any ideas?

[sheres54tea]

We thoroughly tested this. From a Server 2008 task, Dowclock's shutdown process works, but the messages do NOT display. So we put our tasks back on an XP box alls works as expected again. I suspect 2008's stronger security lockdown has something to do with this.

[Scott]

The security on Windows Server 2008 probably does not allow the service to run interatively on the target computer via psexec.

You may want to check with Sysinternals the developers of psexec.

--Scott

[Johenyst]

I have always used CTL-ALT-R as a custom keystroke to record a macro, and it does not work on v5 and higher on my system. It does work on v 4.7.

I cannot bind the record macro to any other keystroke combination either. I have to go to the menu strip to record and stop recording.

That is the ONLY one that does not bind. All other commands, so far as I can tell, are bindable.

Odder, it seems specific to my main machine. I have an old Dell laptop that works fine, and I have tested other machines as well.

Any ideas on this?

Ed