Parallel Interface » Updates

Notifu now supports silent operation

Guillaume — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 02:32:05 +0000

I just release a small update to Notifu. You can now display a pop-up without playing the system event sound (-q). Notifu also supports the Windows 7 quiet time. By default, pop-up will not be displayed in the first hour or so after the very first logon. I you must display a pop, you can ignore the quiet time with the –w flag.

Go ahead and download the new version.

Aucun reboots computer, unless a debugger is present

Guillaume — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:02:53 +0000

There is a bug in my replacement GINA. I left a call to DebugBreak in my initialisation code.

When Winlogon can’t load a GINA, the server reboots. I run all my tests in virtual machines attached to a remote kernel debugger. I had set up a rule to ignore this first hardcoded breakpoint. In a regular environment, Winlogon did the only sensible thing to do when it received that unhandled exception : terminate.

That triggered the reboot process.

Please use version 1.4.5. I have updated the project page, binary and source code snapshot. I also updated my build script so that it never happens again.

Aucun now supports 64 bits versions of Windows

Guillaume — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:16:20 +0000

Again with much help from user Abdul Khaliq, I can now offert you a 64 bits version of my replacement GINA, called aucun64.dll.

This release also comes with a important bug fix. You can donwload it here.

FIX : Changing password with Aucun crashes winlogon

Guillaume — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:11:20 +0000

There is an important update to aucun that fixes a bug in the dialog procedure hooking code. If you have Aucun version 1.4.2 or earlier, you will experiment the following bug :

Login to the pc.
Hit CTRL-alt-Del to get to the Windows Security Screen
Click “Change Password”
Click “Cancel” to get back to the main Windows Security Screen.
Click “Lock workstation” At this point, the workstation won’t lock.
Click “Cancel”.

At this point Winlogon will crash and the pc will reboot. There are other ways to make the computer crash because of the same bug.

Please update to version 1.4.3.

Many thanks to Abdul Khaliq for helping me test and debug this release !

Notifu 1.5 supports IUserNotification2 new result codes

Guillaume — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:09:39 +0000

I updated my Notifu utility to use the new IUserNotification2 interface introduced in Vista. It allows to detect a left or right click on the icon in the system notification area. If you run Windows XP, behaviour is unchanged.

On Vista, you can also revert to the old interface by adding the /xp switch.

I am also investigating a timeout problem. In short, the timeout is not honoured if the user is doing something. A system default is used. On my Windows XP SP2 and Vista Business SP1, it is 10 seconds. Some users report shorter times than that (3 seconds).

You can download it here.

Aucun version 1.4 released : bug fixes, fail safe and debug support

Guillaume — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 04:03:12 +0000

I just put online version 1.4 of my replacement Gina ! Thanks to everyone who gave me a break while I was spending more time house shopping, buying and renovating. This release is very good, thanks to everybody who wrote me about problems they were facing… Here is what’s new :

Fixed a bug where registry keys and groups had to be present to work.
Fail safe behaviour reverts to normal MSGINA.dll if anything goes wrong
Better detection of the user logged in coming back to unlock
Registered as a logon process (Paralint shows in the Event log instead of Winlogon)
Added an option to generate a debug output (off by default, see Sample.reg)
Corrections and clarification in the documentation
Automated build, test and release scripts

Next up ? I am not sure. I am thinking about a self-service application, like a companion product, and when I get that to work, find a way to integrate that concept with Aucun. Something like after N bad logon, you are redirected to the self service application.

Enjoy !

Notifu supports concatenation of parameters

Guillaume — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:51:21 +0000

This Notifu update allows you to concatenate multiple /m and /p switches. It is usefull when a paramater to Notifu is feed by a program you have no control over.

For example, this command line now works :

notifu /p Concatenate /p " this" /m "Hello" /m ", " /m "World"

Nothing is added to your parameters. If you want a space, you must add it.

Note to self : Got to fix my release script… A simple update takes longer to post online than to code !

Notifu supports embedded quotes in parameters

Guillaume — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 02:42:16 +0000

I fixed a bug in notifu that made it ignore quotes that were escaped with a backslash. For example, this command line works now :

notifu /m "\"Theo Est\" test@example.com"

Thanks to Sof for the heads up !

Notifu updated, now with Vista support

Guillaume — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 21:23:32 +0000

Here is just a little update to my Notifu utility. It is a drop-in replacement (no new command-line switches) that features

Vista Home Premium and Vista Business support (same binary works on XP and Vista)
Better error handling on platforms that don’t support IUserNotification
Option to specify pop-up delay in seconds (/d 5 or /d 5000 will give you 5 seconds)

I updated the main project page. There are a couple of typos and the email link is gone. I will fix that sometimes this week. Click on the bitmap here or on the project page to download.

Enjoy !

Remplacement GINA now allows force logoff, administrator exclusion

Guillaume — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:50:39 +0000

I was a little overwhelmed by the reaction to my custom GINA. The good thing about it is that it motivated me to put a better version out that addresses all the comments I had so far, namely :

Allow force log off without being a member of the administrator group
Allow an arbitrary group to be excluded from this GINA unlock policy
Show a notice that a custom GINA is in place

I also put up a permanent page for the project. It has better documentation and fancy graphics. Enjoy !