Regarding your question about disabling from a separate OS (Post #29):
I don't know how you would do this. I can only tell you what you would need in order to make it work. You would first need an OS with a "driver" installed that would allow you to mount, read and write to NTFS volumes. Windows98 & Me do not do this. You could try running 'chkntfs /x C: D:' but I doubt the app will run on Win98/Me in the first place (you will have to copy it over to your 98 box), and in the second place, it wouldn't be able to read your NTFS drive, so that even if it could run you'd be stopped there. I have Macs at home that can read NTFS by default, but not write. There are, however, some Linux drivers for NTFS. Google is your friend. Next you would need a program that runs on your alternate OS that would allow you to read and write to the HKey Local Machine registry hive. I know that this is possible, because I use a utility by a guy called 'PNordahl' that does this exact thing when you forget what the local admin password is on your NT/2000/XP/2003 workstation. Once you've found an app like this, you would open the HKLM hive and change the registry key 'HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\BootExecute'. (Read the rest of this post for more specific instructions.) Then you would reboot back into WinXP and see that everything is working.
EDIT: Now that I'm thinking about it, you may be able to do all this through Mr. Nordahl's app. I haven't tried it, but I'm pretty sure you have the option to write to the registry. You could give it a try. I'll include a link, but if it goes stale, search google for 'PNordahl Password Recovery'. Here's the current link:
http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/ Download the bootdisk iso and burn to CD-ROM. It's easier than booting to a floppy and WAY faster. Again, I think it's a lot more work than is necessary. The easiest thing for us was just to remove the application autochk.exe from our machines. See my explanation in post #25 and #27 if you want to do that.
Regarding post #22:
While writing a shutdown script to run via GP seems pretty easy, I don't think it would solve the problem for everyone. First of all, not everyone (I would venture to say less than 5%, and that's probably generous) runs a Windows 2000 or higher domain at home. I used to do it, but it was because I’m in IT, and a Windows administrator, and I did it to help me get better at my job. I have Macs at home now, so I don't still do it. I do have Windows virtual machines, but they are all in workgroups. Most home users are like this. When you run things via GP, you are typically in a windows domain environment, in fact, I don't know of any other way to use Group Policy.
I checked to see if you could run shutdown scripts without GP, but I couldn't find the analogous setting in the Local Policy editor. So if you were going to use a shutdown script, you would probably just want to do it manually, with a batch file that you run just before you are about to shutdown. However, group policies are just a collection of registry keys. Some of them can be "tattooed" (called so because they are permanent, and stick with a machine through reboot), but most of them are written under keys that get overwritten each time the machine refreshes its GP. I'm not inclined to find that information out because I don't think it will be that useful, but if someone wanted to do it, here's what one would have to do (This assumes you are running a Windows 2000 or 2003 domain, and in the case of 2000, have installed the GPMC. This also assumes that all your drives have letters assigned and are not mount points. If you have mount points you will have to add them to the script yourself because I have no way of knowing what they might be.):
1. Download and install ‘Process Monitor’ from Microsoft (written by Sysinternals until M$ bought them out). It’s free.
2. Set up a filter to look for registry keys with the string ‘autochk’. Refer to the app's documentation for how to do this.
3. Start Process monitor using your new filter.
4. Create a new txt file on your desktop (or wherever else you want and have access to).
5. Rename the file to ‘disablechkdsk.bat’ (Yes, you are sure you want to change the extension.)
6. Copy the following snippet of code into your batch file. Save it.
Code:
REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager" /v BootExecute /t REG_MULTI_SZ /d "autocheck autochk /k:abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz *" /f
7. Open the Group Policy Management Console and create a test GPO.
8. Edit the new GPO.
9. Go to: Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Scripts (Startup/Shutdown).
10. Right click on Shutdown. Choose ‘Properties’.
11. Click the ‘Add’ button.
12. Browse to the location of the file you created in step 1 and select the file. Click ‘OK’ twice to get back to your policy.
13. Create a test OU on your domain.
14. Apply the policy to this test OU.
15. Move a test machine into this OU.
16. Go to your machine, open a command prompt and run: ‘gpupdate /Force’.
17. Watch Process Monitor for the reg key that changes.
18. If it’s a key that has the word ‘Policy’ or ‘Policies’ in it, you’re out of luck. Not being in a domain, this key will get erased every time you boot up. If you don’t see that word, you might be able to apply that reg key to a machine that is in a workgroup and get it to run a script at shutdown.
Well that’s all I got. Like I said, probably not very useful to do that. It would be more of an academic exercise. It would be much easier to just run the batch file that you create in step 1 every time you shutdown. That would also let you get around your fast shutdown application as well, because you would be running the program before you tell your computer to shutdown.
If you have any questions, I’ll check back in a couple of days to see if I can answer them.