VISTA: How do you run a program before the logon screen appears.?
I have VISTA Ultimate running as a headless server. The RAID system takes 2 minutes to initialize, and the system finally boots in about 3-4 minutes. I want the computer speaker to BEEP when the user logon screen appears to signal when the shared resources are ready. I would think a simple BATCH file would work for this, but I don’t know where to put it (but there seems to be no "BEEP" command in VISTA anyway). Been searching the net for a while now, and can’t even find a utility that will do this. Don’t want to have to pay for any shareware to do this seemingly simple task.
Have you thought about writing the program and then editing the boot.ini file so it is set to run where you want it to in the lineup? Just an idea. may not work.
Ron
March 9th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
maybe create a scheduled task to run at system startup that plays a sound?
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March 9th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Let me quote something for you.
"Don’t want to have to pay for any shareware to do this seemingly simple task."
Seemingly, key word.
Nothing to do with programming is simple; excluding a few small languages no one honestly cares about ^-^.
To answer your question, I don’t believe there is any freeware that does this. Batch programming certainly won’t, or atleast to my knowledge.
In this economy, nothing is free unless useless or almost useless.
IF I come across this answer in the form of a code or program that’s actually free, I’ll contact you (as I do with every person I answer to).
Good luck, sorry fi this didn’t help you, congrats if it did.
-Tony
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March 9th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
Try to find a way to do this with a windows service.
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March 9th, 2010 at 4:24 pm
Don’t see how DOS can check a service status (can start/stop them, but don’t see a query option). If you do find something, you could run it as a Scheduled Task ans set it to run "When my computer starts" and just poll the service and then alert you to when it starts. You may look at Visual Studio Express editions to see how easily you can write an application to interrogate a service. If you go that far though, might as well write a service that is dependent on the RAID service and then have it perform the notification.
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March 9th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
No user program will run on Windows before the user logs in. The only programs that will run prior to login are services, and writing services do not qualify as a "simple task".
As for cost, I believe you can write services using free C compilers, such as Microsoft’s Visual Studio Express (see URL below). (I know that the full Visual Studio can do so, as I have done it. I have not tried the express version to see if it can do this.) But, to keep it "free", you will need to write it yourself. (And I learned how to write services from a book, which I paid for. I do not know if there are free tutorials on this.)
- kb -
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37+ years of programming experience.
http://www.microsoft.com/express/vc/
March 9th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Have you thought about writing the program and then editing the boot.ini file so it is set to run where you want it to in the lineup? Just an idea. may not work.
Ron
References :