Windows XP – Adding a Shutdown Script Without gpedit.msc or Active Directory

scriptingwindowswindows-xp

I have created a script I want to deploy on my XP workstations as a shutdown script. I know I can add my script as a shutdown script with the UI (gpedit.msc), but I want to automate the deployment of my script. My workstations are not part of a Windows domain. I will deploy with OCS Inventory.

I tried to add entries to the Windows registry, but this doesn't work. I don't see what I added when I run gpedit.msc. If I add something with gpedit.msc, this seem to overwrite what I added manually into the registry.

Best Answer

To anyone struggling to get this working, my sympathy. I spent many hours trying to figure out exactly which of the hundreds of changes gpedit makes are actually important. My tests were conducted on Windows Server 2016. These turned out to be relevant:

The values under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy\State\Machine\Scripts\[Startup|Shutdown]\0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy\State\Machine\Scripts\[Startup|Shutdown]\0\0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy\State\Machine\Scripts\[Startup|Shutdown]\0
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy\State\Machine\Scripts\[Startup|Shutdown]\0\0

The directories:

\Windows\system32\GroupPolicy\Machine\Scripts\Startup
\Windows\system32\GroupPolicy\Machine\Scripts\Shutdown

Windows uses those directories as the working directory for the scripts. Even if you don't keep your startup/shutdown scripts there, those directories need to exist.

Nothing else gpedit does seemed to matter. This includes many registry entries and the .ini files referenced in other answers. It's possible that some of the keys above are superfluous as well but I ran out of testing patience.

Related Solutions

Windows – Useful Command-line Commands on Windows

A little known one is

getmac

It shows the MAC address(es) of your network adapter(s).

Screenshot of running getmac from a Windows commandline window.

How to add an Open Directory server via a script

I discovered the method (Deploy Studio) I was deploying my images had scripts already to do the Open Directory binding - I've modified the scripts slightly to give the crux of the script for here to answer my question. This example only uses anonymous binding (not explicitly bound to the OD server)

#!/bin/sh

# Used ds_open_directory_binding.sh (v1.6) from Deploy Studio as a base for the explicit question.
# I recommend downloading Deploy Studio (http://deploystudio.com) to see other methods but the crux
# of how it is done can be read here. (eg. no error checking here)

#Enable LDAPv3 Plugin
defaults write /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService/DirectoryService "LDAPv3" Active 2>&1
chmod 600 /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService/DirectoryService.plist 2>&1

/usr/sbin/ipconfig waitall

#Configure LDAP
dsconfigldap -a 'server.example.com' 2>&1

#Restart DS
killall DirectoryService
sleep 5

#Create Search Policy
dscl localhost -create /Search SearchPolicy CSPSearchPath 2>&1

#Create Contacts
dscl localhost -create /Contact SearchPolicy CSPSearchPath 2>&1

#Add OD Server to the search path
dscl localhost -append /Search CSPSearchPath '/LDAPv3/server.example.com' 2>&1

#Add OD Server to Contact Search Policy
dscl localhost -append /Contact CSPSearchPath '/LDAPv3/server.example.com' 2>&1

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – Useful Command-line Commands on Windows

How to add an Open Directory server via a script

Related Topic