MordyT

I think that just about answers my question then. Lots of options, although I still don't see one like I saw before... Thanks for the help.

So like all, we like our PCs to shutdown at night. Mostly so that students get off the machines and get to bed. We setup logon times, but if a PC is already logged in, they don't get booted (well, they lose their network shares, but solitaire is so much fun I guess). So, we want our PCs to reboot nightly, at the shutdown time. Then they won't be able to login until the next day. Students are always looking for ways around the system , including hanging a process to stop a log off. To prevent this, we issue a PsShutdown -r -f -t 0 which works much better then shutdown -f -r -t 0... hung processes actually die as they are supposed to. Then just to make sure they really go down, we have a PsKill winlogon run 5 minutes later... very very effective btw. On Windows XP we could always include a message and countdown timer (using -m "message" and -t 300) so that users would be forewarned and could save. On windows 7 64 bit, this no longer works. Research had lead me to session ids being the issue, and short of using PsExec to run the command (and specify the session id) there is no way of giving either the timer or the message. I got around the message issue but just using msg.exe to broadcast messages 5 minutes before, but I am really looking for a nicer solution. td;tr I need a way to display a countdown message and timer before a scheduled reboot. Looking for a nice way of doing this, preferable without too many 3rd party apps. I have seen this app in use and cannot find it anywhere, basically it gave a pop up that could not be closed unless you pressed ctrl+shift+alt+7 or some wacky combination that had both a timer and a message. This could work if I could figure out what it is.

Hi there, I am currently working on a project for a high school. The goal is to restrict the Lab PCs to only use approved software. While we have had great success in blocking WMP with a GPO, there is still a possibility to play videos on the PCs. Here is what you do: Open powerpoint, insert video, hit play. It appears powerpoint (and even other MS office 2010 applications) use their own playback methods for embedded media. What I am looking for is a way to prevent media playback (music, videos, etc) inside of MS Office (2010 fwiw) applications. -- Yes, it would be simple to just block powerpoint, but there are legit uses for it, so we can't. And while we could block access to thumb drives, we need to allow students to move files from their home PCs. That leave kicking students who use powerpoint this way out of the lab, but we rather prevent it from happening in the first place. Ideas? Thanks!

Hi, we have the system set to auto-unlock accounts after 30 minutes. I guess we are looking for a way to be able to trigger a unlock, external of the network, on just admin accounts.

Hi there, Doing a project for a non-profit educational institution and we having an issue. Running on Server2003 SBS. Policy is to lockout a account until manually unlocked after 5 failed attempts. There is a concern that a person will deliberately lock out all the admin accounts in the domain. Short of having a hidden account that we will be able to login with, is there a way to prevent admin accounts from being locked until unlocked?

Hi all, Excellent community here, hopefully I will be able to stop banging my head against google here and actually find what I need. I have a bunch of lenovo a58 boxes here that we need to prevent users from opening. I am looking for the official chassis locks for these machines, as the ones I have don't push the locking mechanism far enough forward to engage. Attached is a picture of what I have, does anyone know where I can get the official ones? I tried calling lenovo, they hung on me after about 30 minutes of going round and round.