Lock Workstation During Installation and Deployment

During remote installation or will running a command script on a remote computer, I prefer to hide as much as possible from the remote computer's display. I've found that even if software installation can be done in a silent mode, there are some things, like OS scripts, that are not hidden. Here are a few tips to make sure you aren't exposing too much to prying eyes.

To hide some time jobs running on the user desktop, I found an easy way and is send a lock workstation command. Using the following method during an installation the only screen displayed is the logon screen. Nothing else is shown.

After this command the user does have to log in again. But it does enable you to run short scripts or use off-hours periods to run your scripts without them appearing on the screen.

Here is the script:

@Echo off
rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation

This function has the same result as pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del and clicking Lock Workstation.

A great feature about this command is that processes running on the desktop are kept alive during the session. In contrast, using the logoff command in the Altiris script, all applications are stopped and the user can lose data.