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How to detect current hardware profile?

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7 replies

by ronanob

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I'm optimising our Windows 2000 laptops using Hardware profiles, so certain services are disabled when the "no network" profile is selected. I also need to be able to start software based on which profile was selected. I figured I'd be able to find a tool that would tell me via errorlevels if a service was active or not, thereby knowing which profile was loaded and lauching the appropiate software. However, I can't find such a utility. A WSH solution would also do, but I don't know VB/JS! Help appreciated :)

7 replies

by mphoffar

Your best bet is to probobly look at settings for the NIC. Most newer nics I've seen have a function to detect for presence of an ethernet connection, and in turn, when a lack of a connection is present, will turn off specific services. The other side of this is, a script probobly would not work because you'll need to have the system account to do the work or have the person has local admin privs on the laptop to execute it.

I'm not quite sure why you're wanting to use a hardware profile though. It sounds as you're on an NT domain using roaming profiles. After the person has logged into the machine once and has their personal settings on it, go into the users tab on the system applet and change the type of profile from roaming to local, that way, the person will still be able to get a desktop using cached settings from the last time they touched the network.

Good luck to you

Mark

by ronanob

All I need the script to do, is detect what hardware profile the user selected during bootup. I figured this could be done a few ways, one of which would be to determine if certain services are/are not running (because certain services are disabled in the no network hardware profile) - this way I could tell what hw profile was loaded.

The systemaccount/roaming profiles are not relevant here - each user has administration rights, and the profiles are stored locally -- I am talking about Hardware profiles, no user ones.

The reason I want to use hardware profiles is to optimise the system - I don't see the point in loading services that aren't going to be used. The reason I'd like to be able to detect which profile is loaded, is so I can script a batch file so that our VPN client only loads when necessary i.e when the user has selected "no LAN profile"

by estebandelatorre

W2K BY DEFAULT WILL NOT START ANY RELATED NETWORK SOFTWARE (SERVICES) IF IT DOESNOT FIND THE NETWORK RUNNING.
THERE'S AN ICON NEAR THE CLOCK, WHICH SHOWS YOU THE NETWORK PRECENSE.
WHAT I WILL DO IS A SCRIPT TO PING TO A WELL KNOW SERVER, AND DEPENDING ON THE RESPONSE, LAUNCH ON SETS OF PROGRAMS OR OTHERS. (BUT DON MISS YOUR TIME, NETWOKS SERVICES, LIKE FTP, SMTP, ETC WILL NOT START IF A NETWORK CANT BE FOUND)

GOOD LUCK

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