I'm looking for a good way to automatically kick users off of NT 4 machines after they have been inactive for a certain amount of time. I've been trying to get this going using screen savers, but it doesn't seem to be working very well. First, I set up policies so that users cannot change the screen saver. I also found a .adm file on Microsoft's site that allows me to specify a screen saver for a user, along with the timeout and other options. Next, I installed winexit.scr from the NT Resource Kit on several machines. I learned about the registry premissions I would need to grant to make this screen saver work for normal users and implemented this. In testing, this combination seemed to work great. I could set preferences for the screen saver (ie right click it and click configure) when logged in as administrator, but not when logged in as a normal user. In all of my tests, the user was automatically logged off after the time I specified. However, after a few days, this stopped working for no apparent reason. The settings for the screen saver were getting reset to the defaults on their own. Plus, the screen saver seemed to become completely ineffective at times. Sometimes, users could stay inactive much longer than my time limit should have allowed without getting kicked. Other times, odd error messages would appear at the time limit, saying things such as "winexit.scr could not initialize USER32.DLL" or KERNEL32.DLL.
I thought this was probably some problem with the screen saver, so I looked for an alternative. I stumbled across a small program called logoff.exe (unfortunately, I seem to have lost the link). It works by simply logging off the current user whenever it is run. I renamed it logoff.scr and installed it on the same machine I'd been using with the other screen saver. Again, in testing, this worked perfectly. There was no configuration to worry about, so I thought my problems were solved. However, after a few days, I again began to notice problems. It seems that sometimes the program simply refuses to run. For example, this afternoon, a user had been inactive far longer than the time limit, but he hadn't been kicked. I tried manually running logoff.exe on the machine while he was still logged in, and it had no effect. So, I had him log off and log back on to the same machine. This time, it worked perfectly (I made no changes to anything).
This really has me baffled. I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong, or if there's a better/simpler way to accomplish what I'm trying to do. I'd be very grateful for any advice.
I thought this was probably some problem with the screen saver, so I looked for an alternative. I stumbled across a small program called logoff.exe (unfortunately, I seem to have lost the link). It works by simply logging off the current user whenever it is run. I renamed it logoff.scr and installed it on the same machine I'd been using with the other screen saver. Again, in testing, this worked perfectly. There was no configuration to worry about, so I thought my problems were solved. However, after a few days, I again began to notice problems. It seems that sometimes the program simply refuses to run. For example, this afternoon, a user had been inactive far longer than the time limit, but he hadn't been kicked. I tried manually running logoff.exe on the machine while he was still logged in, and it had no effect. So, I had him log off and log back on to the same machine. This time, it worked perfectly (I made no changes to anything).
This really has me baffled. I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong, or if there's a better/simpler way to accomplish what I'm trying to do. I'd be very grateful for any advice.
