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Monday, May 5, 2008

Running a process in the secure winlogon desktop

Have you ever wanted to run something in the secure desktop controlled by winlogon - the desktop you see when nobody is logged on?

I have, and recently realised that psexec supports this - with the '-x' command. For example, if you run the following command and then press ctrl+alt+del or logoff, you’ll still have a console with the ability to start other commands:

  • psexec /x /d /s cmd

This only works on the local machine, but of course psexec allows you to run things remotely! The following command therefore uses psexec to remotely run cmd to start psexec locally to run cmd in the local winlogon desktop of the remote computer:

  • psexec /s \\%computer% cmd /c psexec /accepteula /x /d /s cmd

This was done using psexec.exe v1.94 and the second command assumes that psexec.exe is available in the path on the remote computer.

References:

Unlocking XP/2003 without passwords
http://waynes-world-it.blogspot.com/2008/04/unlocking-xp2003-without-passwords.html

1 comment:

ferrix said...

You are my hero. I kept trying to do this but I didn't think about the need for /accepteula . So my remote psexec just sat there like an idiot.


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I’ve worked in IT for over 20 years, and I know just about enough to realise that I don’t know very much.