Display over Ctrl Alt Delete Login Dialog

 Keywords: Warn Warning Dialog Display  Ctrl Alt Delete Del Login

Question:

Does anyone know if there is a way to put up a dialog box in front of or just up while windows is at the Log In ctrl-alt-del screen.
Basically we are doing remote installs and configurations on machine and require the users to be logged out while it is happening, but when the user gets to their machine in the morning and something is working on the machine they have no way of knowing and may log in and distrupt the process.

I'm not looking to prevent the user from logging in I just want a message box up so they know something is happening.

Answer:

We needed the same thing when we deployed XP SP2. A colleague wrote the attached executable. Run it via the System account and it will stay on screen and display over the Ctrl-Alt-Del login dialog. This has been tested on XP only. Unfortunately, it does have an OK button which my colleague could not find any way to remove. We just run it in a loop so that if the user clicks OK, it justs pops back up. Of course, we break out of the loop when the install is done. [ INSTWARN.EXE ]

Here's an example of how to run it:

IntControl(1002,0,0,0,0) ; Do not show icon
IntControl(12,5,0,0,0) ; Terminate silently
Title = "Upgrade In Progress"
Msg = "Please do not attempt to logon":@CRLF:@CRLF:"This message will close when the upgrade is complete"
Count = 0
While 1
   Exe = "instwarn.exe"
   If !AppExist(Exe,0,0) Then Run(Exe,'"':Msg:'" "':Title:'"')
   Count = Count + 1
   If Count==3 Then Break ; Replace with your custom check
EndWhile

User Reply:

This looks good but I was looking to have something bigger and of course controlable, have different text or images etc.

Answer:

Good luck. We really struggled finding anything at all that would display over the login prompt. With instwarn.exe, the title and text strings are controllable as demonstrated in the sample script I posted. Size of text is fixed. Size of window grows with message, so you can add white space to make it bigger. Example:

IntControl(1002,0,0,0,0) ; Do not show icon
IntControl(12,5,0,0,0) ; Terminate silently
VS = StrFill(@CRLF,15)
HL = StrFill(" ",20)
HR = StrFill(" ",35)
Title = "Upgrade In Progress"
Msg = VS:HL:"Please do not attempt to logon":HR:@CRLF:@CRLF:HL
Msg = Msg:"This message will close when the upgrade is complete":HR:VS
Count = 0
While 1
   Exe = "instwarn.exe"
   If !AppExist(Exe,0,0) Then Run(Exe,'"':Msg:'" "':Title:'"')
   Count = Count + 1
   If Count==3 Then Break ; Replace with your custom check
EndWhile

Article ID:   W17425

File Created: 2019:08:14:09:21:40

Last Updated: 2019:08:14:09:21:40

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