Teh Tech » Kaseya

All About Internet Explorer 8 & Uninstall/Rollback Script

admin — Sun, 02 May 2010 18:19:09 +0000

Internet Explorer 8 is the newest release from Microsoft and recently left beta and hit automatic updates. I will be discussing the issues that I have encountered, and the fixes I have found. Additionally, I will include group policy templets to prevent its distribution and a uninstall script to remove it for systems. I came in Monday to find that the software was installed on a spattering of computers across sever different clients (about 250 computers). I spent most of the rest of the week fixing them.

Issues that I have had:

No reboot: This seems to be the most common issue I encountered. If the patch was installed and the computer was no rebooted you will experience things like not being able to type in text input fields. Rundll32.exe memory dumps, and missing menus and toolbars. To fix this rebooting seems to do the trick.

No Header or title in internet explorer: For some reason I have seen this a few times when the computer went from IE6 to IE8 directly. The browser window will not show any title, and will not allow you to open any menus. The fix I found for this is to give the user account local admin rights and login again. Go through the setup wizard and change the rights back again.

Internet explorer will not open after upgrade: I have seen this a few times. First try running the browser as another user. If it opens, try giving the user that is having issues local admin rights. If this does not fix it I found that recreating the user profile works ( I had to resort to this only twice out of 12 browsers that would not open)

Website Incompatibility: MANY products and websites are not compatibly with internet explorer 8. Microsoft chose not to follow internet conventions when developing the browser so there have been a ton of issues encountered. This is actually so prevalent that Microsoft introduced compatibility view to allow people to render websites in Internet Explorer 7. Check out THIS
Spybot – If you have spybot installed on your computer unfortunately it will not work with internet explorer 8. The people at spybot are working to fix this but the only solution I found as of writing this is to uninstall either IE8 or spybot.

ADP – a very common workflow and payroll management provider. If you are using IE8 you cannot log into ADP unless you view the page in Compatibility Mode.

Centricity – A common medical Practice management software, this does not seem to work at all with IE8 installed. I found uninstalling to be the only option.

Solidworks – a Design and CAD application, once installed IE8 will cause web help to stop functioning as well as some other web based services. Uninstalling IE8 seems to be the best option for this as well.

Quickbooks – IE8 will break the web-help application and case older versions of quickbooks to crash on first load. Again until there is a hotfix uninstalling IE is the best option.

General Browsing – About 2400 websites are not compatible with IE8. A bunch of banking sites and smaller sites do not work or allow for login, most of these are fixed with compatibility view. Some big name sites like amazon.com ebay.com and download.com are having issues with the browser rendering. I list of sites that are not rendered correctly is available HERE.

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Options:

Microsoft seems to have messed up again. The browser does not follow conventions, it does not have nearly all the bugs and kinks worked out. It causes a ton of applications and websites to not work, so much so they included a compatibility option out of the box. It seems hardly finished to me.

That said rollback may be a good option for you. Microsoft allows several uninstall options:

Add and remove programs wizard – This will let you remove the browser and all subsequent patches in one wizard.

Restore – Sometimes it is just too messed up, the uninstaller wont work, or something else goes wrong. By defult the install creates a restore point. This may be a option in some situations to rollback the mess.

%windir%\ie8\spuninst\spuninst.exe /quiet /norestart /log:G:\%computername%\ie8uninstall.log
Shutdown -r -f -t 30 -c “Reboot for Internet Explorer 8 Uninstall”

Kaseya – It for things like this I love kaseya.

Script Name: IE8 Uninstall
Script Description: Uninstall IE 8

IF Test File
Parameter 1 : %windir%\ie8\spuninst\spuninst.exe
Exists :
THEN
Execute File
Parameter 1 : %windir%\ie8\spuninst\spuninst.exe
Parameter 2 : /quiet /norestart /log:G:\ie8uninstall.log
Parameter 3 : 3
OS Type : 0
ELSE

Preventing the patch for reaching your system – Microsoft admits that the patch might not be for everyone. Check out THIS. It included a group policy template to prevent the update from installing via automatic updates, and a login script option that can also be used with kaseya.

Script Name: Block IE 8
Script Description: Blocks IE8 From Auto Update

IF True
THEN
Execute Shell Command
Parameter 1 : md c:\temp
Parameter 2 : 0
OS Type : 0
Execute Shell Command
Parameter 1 : md c:\temp\ie8
Parameter 2 : 0
OS Type : 0
Write File
Parameter 1 : md c:\temp\ie8\ie8block.cmd
Parameter 2 : admin\batch\IE80Blocker.cmd
OS Type : 0
Execute File
Parameter 1 : md c:\temp\ie8\ie8block.cmd
Parameter 2 : /b
Parameter 3 : 0
OS Type : 0
ELSE

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How to Add and Remove a Local Account from a Group

admin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:35:25 +0000

Occasionally you may need to add a local user account to the local administrators group for a software install or temporary maintenance. The following vbs script can be used to add the local ‘user1’ account to the local ‘administrators’ group. Any user can be added to any local group, change the red to match your needs. The computer name is pulled from the workstation dynamically so this is also completely portable and can be run on any computer.

Dim objComputer, objWSHNetwork, strComputerName, objUser, objGroup
Set objWSHNetwork = WScript.CreateObject(“WScript.Network”)
strComputerName = objWSHNetwork.ComputerName
Set objComputer = GetObject(“WinNT://” & strComputerName)
Set objGroup = GetObject(“WinNT://” & strComputerName & “/Administrators“)
Set objUser = GetObject(“WinNT://” & strComputerName & “/user1“)
objGroup.Add(objUser.ADsPath)
objUser.SetInfo

To use this through Kaseya save the above as user1addadmin.vbs and upload it to the server:

Script Name: Add user1 to admin group
Script Description: Adds the local user1 account to the local admin group
IF True
THEN
Write File
Parameter 1 : c:\temp\user1addadmin.vbs
Parameter 2 : admin\VBS\user1addadmin.vbs
OS Type : 0
Execute File
Parameter 1 : c:\WINDOWS\system32\wscript.exe
Parameter 2 : c:\temp\user1addadmin.vbs
Parameter 3 : 3
OS Type : 0
ELSE

It might also come up that you may need to remove a user from a local group. The following one line batch file can be run as a login script, batch file or ran as a shell command. It will remove the local ‘user1’ account from the local ‘administrators’ group. Again this will work for any user account and any group. Just change the red to match your needs.

net localgroup administrators user1 /delete

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Through Kaseya the following script would accomplish this:

Script Name: Remove the local user1 from admin group
Script Description: removes the local user1 account from the admin group.

IF True
THEN
Execute Shell Command
Parameter 1 : NET LOCALGROUP administrators user1 /delete
Parameter 2 : 1
OS Type : 0
ELSE

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Scripted Enumeration of Accounts with Local Admin Rights

admin — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 16:15:39 +0000

Beefing up security on networks keeps you from having issues in the long run. An hour today can save you three later. In a effort to improve network security and individual computer security I came up with this fancy little kaseya script. It enumerates the local administrators on a computer and exports them to a text file named whatever the target computer has been named. This can also be run through a batch login script. In the example below “g:” is a admin share on my local server, you can make this what ever you want or use a get file in kaseya to snatch the text file from the computer.

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Script Name: Get Local Administrators
Script Description: Enumerates what users are members of the local admin group.
IF True
THEN
Execute Shell Command
Parameter 1 : net localgroup administrators >> gadmin_audit%computername%.txt
Parameter 2 : 1
OS Type : 0
ELSE

Here is the same thing in a batch file with mapping a share:

Net use g: \server01admin_share
net localgroup administrators >> gadmin_audit%computername%.txt
net use g: /delete

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Change The Default Internet Explorer Homepage

admin — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 01:34:13 +0000

I have a chunk of registry tweaks I run on new computers, this is one of them. It changes the internet explorer homepage to www.google.com, though you can use anything you like in place of google, perhaps a intranet page?

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerMain]
“Start Page”=”www.google.com“

Simple but powerful, and can be merged to the registry silently using regedit /s, or added to a list of registry hacks.

To use this with kaseya import the below script, change the red to your best practice and away you go.

Script Name: Default IE Page – google
Script Description: Set Default Page on Iternet Explorer.

IF User Is Logged In
Parameter 1 :
THEN
Set Registry Value
Parameter 1 : HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerMainStart Page
Parameter 2 : http://www.google.com
Parameter 3 : REG_SZ
OS Type : 0
ELSE

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Adding ‘Lock My Computer’ Shortcut to The Desktop

admin — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 01:14:55 +0000

In a effort to increase security at one of my healthcare providers they requested a quick way their employees can lock their computers when they walk away from their computers. I found Mklnk, it is a very tiny free utility that lets you make shortcuts from command line. I decided to use this to accomplish this task. I did some research and found that the following command will lock your computer.

rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation

So I used this with mklnk.exe to make a shortcut on the users desktop, with a lock icon. Below is the batch file I used. G: is a network share containing mklnk.exe.

g:mklnk.exe -a user32.dll,LockWorkStation -i %SystemRoot%system32SHELL32.dll -n 47 %SystemRoot%system32rundll32.exe “%ALLUSERSPROFILE%DesktopLock”

What this does it it passes the arguments user32.dll,LockWorkStation to the rundll32.exe, and the result is a shortcut on the all user desktop called “lock” that uses shell icon 47 (a cute lock graphic).

To use this with kaseya you have to upload mklnk.exe to the kserver, and then import the following script. Be sure to change the red to match the location you have uploaded mklnk.exe.

Script Name: Lock Computer Icon on Desktop
Script Description: Creates a Lock icon on the all user desktop silently

IF True
THEN
Execute Shell Command
Parameter 1 : md c:temp
Parameter 2 : 0
OS Type : 0
Write File
Parameter 1 : c:tempmklnk.exe
Parameter 2 : adminutilmklnk.exe
OS Type : 0
Execute Shell Command
Parameter 1 : c:tempmklnk.exe -a user32.dll,LockWorkStation -i %SystemRoot%system32SHELL32.dll -n 47 %SystemRoot%system32rundll32.exe “%ALLUSERSPROFILE%DesktopLock My Computer”
Parameter 2 : 1
OS Type : 0
Delete File
Parameter 1 : c:tempmklnk.exe
OS Type : 0
ELSE

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Internet Explorer 7 Search Provider Import/Export

admin — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 00:47:56 +0000

I recently came across a computer that for no good reason would seem to allow me to change or add a search provider. When I would attempt to add a provider to the search bar (since google is tons better than the default; windows live) it would cause a fatal exception and close Internet Explorer. After a ton of searching, I could not find this anywhere on the internets so i think it is worth posting here.

I found the registry location of the search provider, and exported it from my computer. Then i exported it into the mean computer and voila the new search provider was installed. The below registry key can be added to the registry of a computer to add Google Search as a search provider and set it as defult. If you want a different search provider just set it up on your computer and export the below key, note that you can also export more than one search provider with this method. I have added these keys to the script of registry tweeks I run when installing a new OS. hope this helps!

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerSearchScopes]
“DefaultScope”=”{10C02F5B-9658-4FF2-944B-2C40A61E2F89}”
“Version”=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerSearchScopes{10C02F5B-9658-4FF2-944B-2C40A61E2F89}]
“DisplayName”=”Google”
“URL”=”http://www.google.com/search?q={searchTerms}&rls=com.microsoft:{language}&ie={inputEncoding}&oe={outputEncoding}&startIndex={startIndex?}&startPage={startPage}”

To do this silently through Kaseya you can save the above as search.reg and upload it to your kserver. Make sure you change the red to match the path of your reg file.

Script Name: Defult Search Provider Google
Script Description: Add Google as search provider in IE 7 and Make it Default

IF True
THEN
Write File
Parameter 1 : c:tempsearch.reg
Parameter 2 : adminRegsearch.reg
OS Type : 0
Execute Shell Command
Parameter 1 : regedit /s c:tempsearch.reg
Parameter 2 : 0
OS Type : 0
ELSE

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Static and DHCP IP Address Changes Through Scripts

admin — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 02:54:23 +0000

I have a office that uses static IP addresses at the location. The manager just got a laptop that he wants to use at the office and at his house the same static address does not work. So I made him two batch files so he can easily switch between a static IP address in the office and a dynamic IP address at home. I was thinking that this could be helpful for making sure everyone in a office is using DHCP and no one is statically assigned. It could also be really useful for changing say the DNS server address on a set of computers automatically through a login script or kaseya.

It is a super simple script. The name of the network adaptor must be changed to match the name of the network adaptor you wish to modify settings for.

DHCP Through a batch/login script:

netsh int ip set address name = “Local Area Connection” source = dhcp
netsh int ip set dns name = “Local Area Connection” source = dhcp
netsh int ip set wins name = “Local Area Connection” source = dhcp

Static IP address through a batch/login script (change the red to match the addresses you need to set. IP is the IP address, SM is the subnet mask, gw is the default gateway, dns1 is the primary dns address, dns2 is the secondary dns address):

@ECHO OFF

set ip=192.168.1.203
set sm=255.255.255.0
set gw=192.168.1.1
set dns1=4.2.2.2
set dns2=4.2.2.1

netsh int ip set address name = “Local Area Connection” source = static addr = %ip% mask = %sm%
netsh int ip set address name = “Local Area Connection” gateway = %gw% gwmetric = 1
netsh int ip set dns name = “Local Area Connection” source = static addr = %dns1%
netsh int ip add dns name = “Local Area Connection” addr = %dns2%
END

DHCP Set through Kaseya

Script Name: Enable DHCP
Script Description: Enables DHCP on the local area conection

IF True
THEN
Execute Shell Command
Parameter 1 : netsh int ip set dns name = “Local Area Connection” source = dhcp
Parameter 2 : 1
OS Type : 0
Execute Shell Command
Parameter 1 : netsh int ip set address name = “Local Area Connection” source = dhcp
Parameter 2 : 1
OS Type : 0
Execute Shell Command
Parameter 1 : netsh int ip set wins name = “Local Area Connection” source = dhcp
Parameter 2 : 1
OS Type : 0
ELSE

You can also use this same pattern to set just one line. For example to use kaseya to quickly change the DNS server address on several computers you can use this. (note 4.2.2.2 is a open DNS server but change it to match what you need):

Script Name: Change DNS to Open DNS
Script Description: Sets DNS on Local Area connection to 4.2.2.2

IF True
THEN
Execute Shell Command
Parameter 1 : netsh int ip set dns name = “Local Area Connection” source = static addr = 4.2.2.2
Parameter 2 : 1
OS Type : 0
ELSE

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All about the Shutdown Command

admin — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 01:21:44 +0000

The ability to restart and shutdown computers automatically or remotely is key to completing installs, fixing issues, or just having a hell of a time messing with end users. In this post ill detail all the switches and uses of the shutdown command.

For anyone that is not familiar with the command ‘shutdown’, it is a windows/dos function that controlls the the shutdown, logoff and restart of a compiter or server either locally or remotely.

Here are the switches

shutdown [-i | -l | -s | -r | -a] [-f] [-m \\computername] [-t xx] [-c "comment"] [-d up:xx:yy]

Just typing shutdown won’t do anything; you need arguments.

-i This will display the GUI interface for the shutdown command. This works well in some cases though you do get more flexability with the command line options.
-l This will log off the current session on the computer. This cannot be used on remote computers though.
-s This will turn off the computer, this can be done remotely, but carefull you can’t remotely press the power botton on the front of the box!
-r This will restart the local or remote computer. Usefull stuff.
-a This will cancel the shutdown restart or logoff process, this must be used before the shutdown commences (during the countdown).
-m This is what allows you to specify the name of the computer you want to perform the action on (shutdown, restart or abort).
-t This lets you chose how long you want to display the warning message for in seconds. You can use ‘-t 0′ to immediatly start the shutdown process with no message displayed.
-c This lets you specify the reason that you shutdown or restarted in the event log. There is a max of 127 chracters for this switch.
-f This forces all applications to close with no warning. This should almost always be used with a remote computer so you dont have a box asking if you would like to shave chnages to ‘untitled.txt’ on the screen instead of it actually rebooting.
-d This switch will let you specify the reason for the shutdown using microsoft reason codes. ‘u’ is for user code ‘p’ is for planned and the ‘xx’ is to specify a major reason, while ‘yy’ is to specify a minor reason.

So putting it all together.

shutdown -r -f -m\\remotecomputer -t 60 -c “reboot required to complete software install”

This will restart the the computer ‘remotecomputer’ after 60 seconds of displaying the message “reboot required to complete software install”. To abort the shutdown within 60 seconds, issue the following command.

shutdown -a -m \\remotecomputer

If the remote shutdown is not working for you remember that if you are in a workgroup the account you are logged in with must exist on, and have administrative rights on the remote computer. If you are on a domain, the user account must have SeRemoteShutdownPrivilege and SeShutdownPrivilege to accomplish this.

Here are some other interesting notes on this function/script: It can be batched and run as a scheduled task. For example, saving the above script as a restart.bat and scheduling it to run at a specified time will give you the ability to reboot a server at whatever time you want. Additionally, shutdown commands can be used via telnet. You can telnet to a remote computer or server and issue the shutdown command to reboot the target computer. Lets face it, sometimes you have to install something with administrative rights, but you don’t want to wait for it to finish. So just batch it and add a logoff command right after the install. I use this all the time when I install office. I login to a computer with an elevated account, and run a batch file to install office silently with a shutdown -l -t 0 at the end of the batch file, then lock the computer. The install will finish and the account will logoff, its a useful little trick. Lastly with Kaseya; since this is directly a shell command you can issue it with just a few steps.

Script Name: Shutdown

Script Description: Shutdown the computer using Shutdown.exe

IF True

THEN

Execute Shell Command

Parameter 1 : shutdown -s -f -t 1 -c “Setup complete”

Parameter 2 : 0

OS Type : 0

ELSE

Change the red to match your needs and away you go.

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Add Command Prompt Here Context Menu

admin — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:53:04 +0000

Easy fast administration means less stress. This nifty script aims to save you some time. This adds the right click context menu to all folders in explorer ‘cmd prompt here’. When you click this option a command prompt with the current directory will be displayed. This is a very useful tool for administrative functions and saves you the time of opening a command prompt and changing directory to the folder you need. Additionally, it gives you a really easy way to walk a user through opening a command prompt window when you need them to run something like ipconfig over the phone. This is a visual basic script and runs silently, so it can be deployed by login script, or GPO as well as kaseya. Just save it as a .vbs.

Dim WSHShell
Set WSHShell = WScript.CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
WSHShell.RegWrite “HKCR\Folder\Shell\MenuText\Command\”, “cmd.exe /k cd ” & chr(34) & “%1″ & chr(34)
WSHShell.RegWrite “HKCR\Folder\Shell\MenuText\”, “Cmd Prompt Here”

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For Kaseya, save the above as cmd_here.vbs, and upload it to the server. Import this script and change the red location to match the location of the file on your server.

Script Name: cmd here
Script Description: Adds ‘cmd here’ to the context menu of explorer
IF True
THEN
Write File
Parameter 1 : c:\temp\cmd_here.vbs
Parameter 2 : admin\VBS\cmd_here.vbs
OS Type : 0
Execute File
Parameter 1 : c:\WINDOWS\system32\wscript.exe
Parameter 2 : c:\temp\cmd_here.vbs
Parameter 3 : 3
OS Type : 0
ELSE

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Change Windows Firewall From Command Line or Batch File

admin — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:01:24 +0000

I have a set of scripts I run when I prep a computer for deployment. At specific points applications require that the windows firewall be turned off in order to install correctly. This is namely ACT! and imagine time. They use a bunch of odd ports during install, so their documentation tells you to just turn off the firewall. Well here is what I found with a little research. From run or in a batch file there is a simple netsh command to disable the firewall and one to again enable it.

For imagine time my install script looks like this

netsh firewall set opmode disable
g:\Imagine_time\IT_SETUP.exe /q /p
netsh firewall set opmode enable

Effectively this will turn off the firewall, install the software silently from a share, and then enable the firewall again after install. I found something interesting with this in regards to kaseya too. Sometimes VNC can’t get through the firewall because it has defaulted or something went wrong. It turns out that if you run this as “system” you can actually disable the firewall remotely in many cases. This has been a very helpful script for when a computer shows ‘connectable’ but it just times out when attempting connection.

Script Name: Win Firewall Off

Script Description: Turns off windows firewall

IF True

THEN

Execute Shell Command

Parameter 1 : netsh firewall set opmode disable

Parameter 2 : 1

OS Type : 0

ELSE

Additionally, if you change enable to disable in the above script, you can enable the firewall remotely through kaseya as well.

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