I spent the last day or two trying to automate some post installation steps for our VMware cloning process. We wanted to push things like AV installations, move the computer to the correct OU, verify it joined the domain or re-join it to the domain (issues with static IPs), etc.
From what I have gathered, the VMware Customization's Run Once commands get stuffed into the sysprep section. As sysprep states, any commands are executed on the first user login with that user's credentials and within their profile.
The important piece to note, and I am not an expert on this, is that the commands in the aka the VMware Run Once are not processed by a command interpreter. Meaning cmd.exe is not what is executing these processes. My best guess is that explorer.exe or some shell app is what is actually running the commands passed into via the Run Once section of the VMware customizations.
Therefore, if you want to execute DOS commands such as echo, pause, reg, psexec, etc, you need to use cmd /c
For example, these work:
cmd /c echo "Hello World" > C:\test.txt
These do not work:
echo "Hello World" > C:\test.txt
It seems that "net use" works without a cmd /c which is intriguing, but I have not thoroughly tested this yet. I assume *.bat and *.cmd would work with or without cmd /c since they would initiate a cmd interpreter.
Additionally Neither of these work.
cmd /c reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce" /t REG_SZ /v Start_Notepad /d notepad.exe
reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce" /t REG_SZ /v Start_Notepad /d notepad.exe
cmd /c reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" /t REG_SZ /v Start_Notepad /d notepad.exe
reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" /t REG_SZ /v Start_Notepad /d notepad.exe
At this point I am not quite sure if you can manipulate the registry in the . It seems these should work, but they do not appear to be working. All the above commands work after the computer is booted. Something after the either overwrites these changes or discards the changes. That is my theory.
I hope that sheds some light on this topic, and I spent a good 4 hours on Google and i could not find any blog, forum, kb article that stated to use cmd /c when submitting dos commands via Run Once.
Thank you,
Kevin
