Getting a Service to Run on Startup Pre-Login

[jbtman]

How hard would it be to code a DLL that simply pops up a message box before a user can log in to windows? They would have to acknowledge this messagebox before logging in?

Any direction would be appreciated!

 

[Guru7777]

If you just want to show users a message they have to accept, you need to set it in the Group Policy.

This KB article is titled for Server 2003, but has lots of other examples down the page.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310430

Additionally (and the hard way), you could look into writing your own file to replace MSGINA.dll. Novell has done this with NWGINA.dll to override the windows login dialog box. My suggestion for that would be that you could handle the login yourself and then display anything you want.

I would just vote for the Group Policy. That is how it has been done in all large companies that I have worked for that have had a computer usage policy that needed accepted before the computer could be used.

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[jbtman]

But wouldn't the user just be able to go and turn it off? This is for a stand alone machine that is not connected to any networks with no policy enforcement.

I tried it out on a local XP machine and it does what I would like, just concerned about the ramifications if the user shut if off.

 

[jbtman]

Is there a way to prevent it from being turned off?

 

[Guru7777]

If the user is an administrator on their own computer, then they could change it. If they aren't, they can't.

If the computers are part of a domain, then the settings for that dialog box (and all of group policy) should come from the domain controller. Those cannot be altered.

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[jbtman]

Yeah, the user will be an administrator on their machines so I don't know if this will be a good fix. Also, the machines will not be a part of any domain.

Thanks for the help!