Scanner and camera wizard (wiaacmgr.exe) help?

[greenfieldsupport]

We have bought some new camera's, now as we dont allow usb sticks here, the students dont have access to anything but defined drives.

 

The cannon cameras that we own are great, when the students plug them in, autorun pops up saying "microsoft scanner and camera wizard" and asks you to transfer the photo's to your work area (Great!!)

 

With these new cameras that isnt the case.

 

my question is, how does one create a shortcut which tells microsoft scanner and camera wizard to use the folder d:\dcim as its source?

 

Ive made a shortcut just to the wizard but it just says "no scanners and cameras detected" however when i connect the camera as an admin, it lets me run the scanner and camera wizard through autorun saying the device is "[D:]"

 

Ive searched for switches which can be put on wiaacmgr but i havent found any which work .

Any ideas?

 

Thanks

-Tony

[dave.81]

Sounds like the camera's are trying to "install" some of it's own driver, much like those annoying U3 pen drives and the restricted user is not allowed to do this.

 

As to fix not sure with the pen drives we have told them to go buy a different one but with the camera's thats not an option lol.

[greenfieldsupport]

Lol. Yes, Unfortioulatly tahts not an option, otherwise we would gladly donate them to willitblend.com

[greenfieldsupport]

Anyone else got a solution??

 

Thanks

[webman]

Are the cameras using the USB Mass Storage mode or the photo transfer protocol thingy?

[SYNACK]

Sounds like something that should be sorted camera side rather than software side. In most newer digital camera models there is a setting in the cameras on board software that tells the camera how to appear to the computer. Either as a Camera or USB Mass Storage device. Depending on if this feature is offered in the camera it should just be a case of setting this option to camera mode. This will make the computer launch the camera wizard automatically and correctly.

[greenfieldsupport]

Yeah Ive looked for that mode and it only has disk mode.

 

USB Mass Storage.

 

Any other idea?? im considering throwing them out the window...

[webman]

as we dont allow usb sticks here, the students dont have access to anything but defined drives.

 

USB sticks use the same USB Mass Storage protocol, so I'd imagine you'd need to do something to allow them to use this feature.

[greenfieldsupport]

Hmmm... Never!!1!1

 

I think i'll run a script which mounts E:\DCIM to another drive, using subst.

 

That way they'll only be able to use memory sticks if they make a DCIM folder... let just not tell them eh?

[SYNACK]

If admins can do it and users can't it could be a group policy setting as below:

 

Run a resultant set of policy RSOP snapin (MMC.exe) on a client as a user then check that

 

Policy | Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | System -> "Turn off Autoplay"

 

is not enabled, if it is the console should be able to tell you which policy it is set in. Set it to "Not configured" and do a gpupdate /force on the machine

 

If this does not work you could try this tool from MS that should sort autoruns http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c680a7b6-e8fa-45c4-a171-1b389cfacdad&displaylang=en

 

The shortcut is probably out as there does not appear to be any switches that work with it properly documented or otherwise.

[greenfieldsupport]

Sorted. ive gone for the other method.

 

The RSOP was fine and there isnt a problem with the autoruns as the other cameras work, its just because it pretends to be a flash drive and the students arnt allowed drives lettered D: - H:

 

So i had two solutions.

 

1: Plug in 9 random usb pens first, so when they plug in the camera they get an I: Drive

 

or 2: (which so happens to be the one i went for) added a line in the loginscript.

 

IF EXSIST D:\DCIM SUBST X: D:\DCIM

 

Theyre told to plug the camera in before they log on .

 

sorted.

 

Thanks all for your sugestions tho.

Ranger wernt much help at all :\.

[webman]

Stopping USB flash drives? That's a bit evil

[greenfieldsupport]

one day the children will learn they can boot linux from it... and then were all in trouble

[greenfieldsupport]

On an interesting note, has anyone had a student boot linux from a usb pen, complete with jack the ripper, wireshark and a whole host of hack tools??

 

not to mention proxy tunnlers/firewall bypass programs etc

[richard.thomas]

Surely they'd need to change boot priortiy in BIOS?

[webman]

Nope, not that we know of. All our machines are set to boot from harddrive-only, passworded CMOS setups, and AFAIK the BIOSes don't have any Function keys for the one-time boot device menus.

[greenfieldsupport]

on some, but more and more comps these days are coming with that handy "press F11 for boot menu" button :\

 

think i might just remove that from the keyboards