Startup Scripts

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ken B
  • Start date Start date
K

Ken B

I'm trying to run this BAT script:

if not exist c:\access03\msaccess.exe \\server\share\office2003\maintwiz.exe
/c \\server\share\office2003\addaccess.cmw /qb-

via a computer startup script. So, cmd.exe doesn't accept UNC paths. How
can I get this script to run, if UNC paths are invalid, but the computer
hasn't gotten drive mappings yet?

Need to do it under the Computer startup script before the user logs on
because users don't have admin rights.

How can I make this run?

Thanks,

Ken
 
Ken said:
I'm trying to run this BAT script:
if not exist c:\access03\msaccess.exe
\\server\share\office2003\maintwiz.exe /c
\\server\share\office2003\addaccess.cmw /qb-
via a computer startup script. So, cmd.exe doesn't accept UNC paths.
Click to expand...

Actually, it accepts them just fine. Your problem is that the script runs
under the local machine account, which is unknown to the network, so access
to network resources is denied.

The workaround for this is to create an Active Directory user account for
your scripts. Then, at the top of your script, add something along the
lines of:

net use \\server\share scriptuserpassword /user:scriptuser

The price of this is having to include the password for the account in clear
text, in your scripts. It would be a good idea to restrict this account as
much as possible -- it only needs access to the one share you want to use
for this purpose.
 
Hi Chris-

Thanks for getting back to me. I'm experiencing 2 issues...1 is that I
tried running the script before modification (on my own by double clicking),
and it told me UNC paths were not supported.
'\\tr.LOCAL\SysVol\trc.LOCAL\Policies\{9B863144-1228-4710-8C99-5A3FDC655BF1}\Machine\Scripts\Startup'
CMD.EXE was started with the above path as the current directory.
UNC paths are not supported. Defaulting to Windows directory.

C:\WINNT>if not exist c:\access03\msaccess.exe
\\server\share\office2003\maintwiz.exe /c
\\server\share\office2003\addaccess.cmw /qb-

C:\WINNT>pause
Press any key to continue . . .

If I go with your suggestion of inserting net use, where should I place the
net use, password and /user:scriptuser in relation to the rest of the
command I want to run? It should go:
net use \\server\share\office2003\maintwiz.exe /c
\\server\share\office2003\addaccess.cmw /qb- password /user:scriptuser ?

The other issue is that on the share \\server\share, "Everyone" has Full
Control. I went into the Security tab of the Office2003 folder, clicked
Advanced and looked at the effective permissions for a user's computer, and
it came back with everything checked... so it should allow the computer in
there, no?

TIA

Ken
 
Hi,

Ken said:
I tried running the script before modification (on my own by double
clicking), and it told me UNC paths were not supported.
Click to expand...

To clarify: UNC paths are not supported for the current directory, but are
supported for most other uses.

If you want to use a UNC network path as the current directory in a script,
use pushd and popd. pushd used with a UNC path temporarily maps the
referenced share to a drive letter and changes to that drive/path.

The use of UNC paths is fine in the command line proposed in your first
post.
If I go with your suggestion of inserting net use, where should I
place the net use, password and /user:scriptuser in relation to the
rest of the command I want to run?
Click to expand...

It would be a script of at least two lines, not a single command -- the
first line would be "net use", the second line can be exactly as you had
proposed it in your first post. Don't forget to change "scriptuser" to the
logon name of the account you are going to use.

If you are doing this with a program that must be run from current directory
(or doesn't take UNC paths for filename arguments), then the whole script
could look like this:

if not exist c:\access03\msaccess.exe (
net use \\server\share scriptuserpassword /user:scriptuser
pushd \\server\share\office2003
maintwiz.exe /c addaccess.cmw /qb-
popd
)

It cold be made more complicated, with more error checking, but you see the
idea.
 
Aha! I mis-interpreted what it was telling me... I thought it wouldn't
accept the UNC path as part of the command I wanted to pass. I'll try
pressing forward using the UNC paths, maybe some quotes might do the trick?

Thanks again,

Ken
 
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