Display warning text when someone logs onto your servers

This works for Windows 2003 and Windows 2008.  We use it during our reliability study to let the server owners know that they shouldn't reboot their boxes without a good reason.  You can use it for whatever you’d like. :)

The two keys to set:

reg add "\\brad-dc-01\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v LegalNoticeCaption /t REG_SZ /d "MSIT Reliability Study" /f

reg add "\\brad-dc-01\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v LegalNoticeText /t REG_SZ /d "This server is part of the MSIT Windows 7 Reliability Study.   The server should not be rebooted.  If the server is experiencing a bug, please contact DCOPERATE to triage and they will escalate as needed.  If you are rebooting the server for a hotfix, private fix, or other legitimate reason, please document it properly in the shutdown tracker so that the statistics are accurate." /f

Hop to loop it and apply it en masse:

Open CMD with your alt creds and do the following:

C:\Windows\system32>for /f %a in (machines.txt) do (

More? reg add "\\%a\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v LegalNoticeCaption /t REG_SZ /d "MSIT Reliability Study" /f

More? reg add "\\%a\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v LegalNoticeText /t REG_SZ /d "This server is part of the... (HUGE LONG STRING) ... " /f

More? )

How to turn it off:

C:\Windows\system32>for /f %a in (machines.txt) do (

More? reg add "\\%a\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v LegalNoticeCaption /t REG_SZ /d "" /f

More? reg add "\\%a\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v LegalNoticeText /t REG_SZ /d "" /f

More? )

The result:

 

 

 

 

Another way of doing this is to set "Interactive logon: Message text for users attempting to logon" in secpol.msc...

Technorati Tags: Windows 2003,Windows 2008