Well, it looks like I've tracked down the culprit. And sure enough, it seems to have been the "Run logon scripts synchronously" group policy setting. Changing it from "Enabled" to "Not Configured" allows scripts to run asynchronously, which allows the user's desktop to appear while scripts are still running, which allows wscript to run the looping script in the background.
So now the only thing to do is to watch and make sure that changing that setting doesn't break some other script, but I'm cautiously optimistic that it won't. John From: John Hornbuckle Sent: Monday, June 07, 2010 4:06 PM To: NT System Admin Issues (ntsysadmin@lyris.sunbelt-software.com) Subject: Nested VBS in logon scripts I'm not a logon script or WScript expert-hopefully some of you are. A vendor has provided us with a VBS script that runs during logon. Its purpose is to call a second VBS script, with the goal being that the second script will continue running in the background after the user has logged in (it's a loop that periodically sends a bit of data somewhere). So in the first script is a line that says: objShell.Run "\\server\path\SecondScript.vbs<file:///\\server\path\SecondScript.vbs>", 0, False Unfortunately, the second script-the one that's supposed to run perpetually in a loop-dies while running. After extensive testing, it appears that the second script is dying when the first script's WScript.exe instance wraps up; it's not spawning its own separate instance of WScript. We know this because if we add "WScript.Sleep(10000)" to the end of the first script, the second script will continue to run for 10 seconds. But during those 10 seconds, the user logon process just sits there. So, is there a trick to this? A way to have the first script that runs during logon call a second script that will continue to run in a loop after logon is complete? The vendor says we're the only installation they've seen this issue in. Could there be some group policy we have in place that would cause the behavior we're seeing? John Hornbuckle MIS Department Taylor County School District www.taylor.k12.fl.us NOTICE: Florida has a broad public records law. Most written communications to or from this entity are public records that will be disclosed to the public and the media upon request. E-mail communications may be subject to public disclosure. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
