How to automate two tasks when unsealing sysprepped image

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dave R.
  • Start date Start date
D

Dave R.

I've managed to put together a suitable Vista image, resealed and ready
to distribute. It does everything I need it to except I can't seem to
find a way to do these last two things:

I need for Windows Automatic Updates to be turned off and for the user
to not get bugged about it.
I need for Security Center notifications to be turned off, and the tray
icon to not be displayed, for at least the first 3 users created.

Please, don't tell me that I shouldn't be doing this, etc., - this is
what I'm being directed to accomplish by management. I just need a way
to automate it.

Right now, when the system unseals it runs an app I wrote that automates
a few things before the system auto logs in as the system administrator
for a final piece of software to be installed. I'd like for my app to
take care of those last two things instead of having the end users
perform them manually. I found a couple of registry keys/values that
looked promising, but they don't work:

In HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto
Update, AUOptions set to dword:1 and IncludeRecommendedUpdates set to
dword:0 is the end result of selecting the option to turn off Automatic
Updates when the wizard runs, but there must be something else I'm
missing as setting these values in my app doesn't prevent the wizard
from running and prompting me to choose. Automatic Updates are
disabled, but I still have to select something (and it appears I have to
actually change something in the wizard) and click OK for the wizard and
the tray icon to go away.

Similarly, setting the Security Center to not notify me and not show the
icon, in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Security Center\Svc\, I
find a key for my user SID that contains the values EnableNotifications
set to dword:0 and EnableNotificationsRef set to dword:1. If I have my
app create a new key for each of the 1st 3 user SIDs that will get
created, and populate it with these values, when the user logs in they
still get the warning that there are security issues, and they have to
manually go in and turn off notifications.

I've verified that in both cases that these keys/values are being set
properly in the registry, so I don't know what else it is I need to do.
I'm sure it is something simple, but I'm not getting it. Please help!

Regards,

Dave
 
Dave,

I can't help with the accuracy of those reg keys, but here is how you would
get your application to run upon the next bootup.

Add a RunOnce command to
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce.

This will then execute the next time Vista is launched, i think. I don't
think Vista's sysprep clears out RunOnce commands.

After this process completes, Windows deletes that reg key, thus preventing
it from executing again.
 
Dave, sorry. i just read that you already figured out how to get it to run
automatically. my bad
 
No problem, I just hope someone can help me figure this out. Under XP,
it was easy.

Dave
 
Dave, I'll keep looking for you, but have you considered turning off the
Windows Update and Security Center services? Or does this do more than you
would prefer (eg: turn off notifications about firewall and virus updates)
 
I haven't tried turning off the Windows Update service, but I did try
turning the Security Center service off since we really don't want any
Security Center notifications at all. Unfortunately, when I do that I
get a taskbar notification to the effect that the service isn't running,
with a button to start the service.

Dave
 
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