Weblog Sander Wilmink

I got this info from Softgridblog.com and thought it was interesting enough to share with you. I found this post when I had issues with sequencing a application.

When you are sequencing an application the Windows Installer service might give you an error during monitoring phase.

Error 1719. Windows Installer service could not be accessed. Contact your support personnel to verify that it is properly registered and enabled.

When the application is installed without the sequencer monitoring, the installation finishes without an error and the application works fine.

In this particular situation the sequencer was running Windows Server 2003 and was accessed remotely through a Remote Desktop Connection (mstsc.exe).

The solution to this issue is create a console RDP session to the sequencer machine instead of an regular RDP session. 

You can connect to a console session through the following command:

mstsc /console /v:<server>

Thanks to my colleagues for publishing and solving this issue!

update for Windows Server 2008:
“mstsc /console” has been replaced with “mstsc /admin” on newer Windows Operating Systems (Windows 2008 and Windows Vista SP1 and up). So the correct syntax would then be:

mstsc /admin /v:<server>

To add printers per user during the logon you need to add logon scripts to the computer. You can deploy scripts through the Active Directory policies or by creating a local policy per computer. To create a manageable environment it is the best to attach the script to a policy. By applying the policy to a Organisational Unit you can roll-out the script on the objects in the Organisational Unit. Logon- and Logoffscripts can be applied to Users and Startup- and Shutdownscripts can be applied to Computers.

For adding logon scripts to a policy in Active Directory:

By opening the Group Policy Object Editor and expanding Windows Settings under User Configuration. Select Scripts and you will see this screen:

Dubbelclick on Logon and click the Show Files (1) button in the next screen. You can easily copy and paste your script into this folder. The location where the logon script will be stored is %SystemRoot%\SYSVOL\sysvol\<DOMAIN>\Policies\<GUID>\USER\Scripts\Logon. Now click on Add (2) and the next screen will appear.

By clicking on the Browse button you can select the script you just pasted in the scripts folder.

When you want to prevent users to shutdown the computer from the login-screen you need to change some settings in the registry. This is a part of Windows where everything is set into keys and values. By changing wrong things, the system can be damaged. So please be careful whit changing things. This article is about changing options in the login-screen, so it would not have effect on the rest of the system.

1. Go to Start, Run and type ‘regedit’.
2. Select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system 
3. On the right side of the screen you will see the key ‘shutdownwithoutlogon’. This will grey out the shutdown-button on the logon-screen.

In some cases it is useful to remove Shutdown from the start-menu. In case of a computer in a locked cabinet or a computer which is hided in a rack, you can remove Shutdown from the start-menu.

1. Go to Start, Run and type ‘secpol.msc’.
2. Choose User Rights Assignment on the left side of the screen.
3. On the right side of the screen you will find Shut down the system.
4. When you open the options from that setting you can add users or groups and also remove them. By removing the Users group, normal (domain)users are not able to shut down the PC from the Start-menu.