I have a Powershell script designed to automate the testing of some URLs. The script invokes an Internet Explorer session as such:
$IEProcess = Start-Process -FilePAth 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe' -ArgumentList "-private $url"
$Shell = New-Object -ComObject Shell.Application
$IE = $Shell.Windows()
It then proceeds to use the $IE object to navigate to different URLs, perform various checks against the pages HTML document bodies and take screenshots of the resulting web pages. Ultimately, the IE session is ended and the screenshots are distributed via email as attatchments.
The script works perfectly when logged onto the virtual host-machine with a service account, that has the necessary permissions for single-sign-on to the various URLs. However, the requirement is for the script to run remotely as a scheduled task, on a daily basis. There should be no interaction by a user other than opening the resulting email.
I have had a job set up in AutoSys to execute the script remotely, once a day, with highest privileges; but the script fails to complete as expected. Specifically, the .Windows() method fails passing the following error message:
Exception calling "Windows" with "0" argument(s): "The server process could not
be started because the configured identity is incorrect. Check the username an
d password. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8000401A)"
I have to give the job of scheduling the task in autosys to someone else (for security reasons) but I trust that they have configured the job with the appropriate username/password for the necessary service account.
Some online sources suggest to me that the issue might lie with trying to use _ComObjects remotely, and that instances of Internet Explorer require an interactive user session with a UI - which isn't standard config for an autosys batch job.
I have had my autosys-guy add a flag to the job description which should make the user session "interactive", but the script still doesn't execute correctly.
I'm looking for some general insight on the topic and hopefully a solution to get the job running. If anyone cares to help me out I would greatly appreciate it! :)
I also have a more focussed question:
Even if I managed to get a handle on the IE session, should I expect the screenshots that the script takes to fail since the screen buffer for the VM has no monitor to render to? - The images are bitmap and refer to the IE shell objects "position", "width" and "height" for capture placement/dimensions; which presumably mean nothing without a screen resolution??
Thank you for taking the time to read my issue!
Related
When I am running commands or installing software remotely using PowerShell - Invoke-Command etc I would like sometimes to be able to show a message on the remote screen so the user knows something is happening, or when work done etc.
I would like to if possible make this message look as professional as possible, e.g. better than just a standard winform message box if it can be done? perhaps more the style of the Windows 10 ones with coloured background and use of image if possible.
Spent a while googling but most seem to relate to using obsolete methods such as net-send or using msg.exe.
Thanks
https://michlstechblog.info/blog/powershell-show-a-messagebox/
So the issue really isnt creating the messagebox itself, its having it show on the users session.
So when you run a command against a system, youre using your creds to run the command therefore it wont show in the users session. You can get around this by running it in the users context using a task scheduler. I have a script that does all this for you but, id hate to recreate the wheel and will have to wait till monday (when im at work) to post it here.
It accepts user input in your sessions that outputs it to a vbs, which then copies it over the message to the users machine, and a task schedule is set to run immediately for the user thats logged in.
edit: The script is this without the task scheduler. I just invoke gwmi win32_computersystem | Select -ExpandProperty username to get the current user logged in and add it to the task.
#Prompt for messge
$strMSG = Read-Host -Prompt "Enter message"
#deleting vbs if it exists
del C:\brief\test.vbs
#creating vbs from scratch so it doesnt override
New-Item C:\brief\test.vbs
#Appending each the values to a seperate line
Add-Content C:\brief\test.vbs 'Set objShell = Wscript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")'
Add-Content C:\brief\test.vbs "strText = `"$strMSG`""
Add-Content C:\brief\test.vbs 'intButton = objShell.Popup(strText,0,"Computer Support",48)'
#calling on the script
& cscript C:\brief\test.vbs
Found a great solution here which appears on quick testing to work well for displaying a toast notification on a remote machine
https://smsagent.blog/2019/06/11/just-for-fun-send-a-remote-toast-notification/
I have a situation which I need some help with.
I'm running an Azure build pipeline on microsoft hosted private VM with quite a old build program/IDE which does not have any CLI.
So I have to start the program and then press a key (F10) to start the build, right now i'm using Powershell for this.
I have issues though to get this to work on the VM when I have disconnected RDP, almost always (not 100%) when I have rdp open my script works and set focus to the program and presses the key. But sometimes it doesn´t work, and it seems to always fail when the rdp is disconnected. My build fails and when I connect with RDP the window is just grey:d out and it hasn't registered any keypress.
I have found some similar threads which seems to touch upon the issue, but not any solution for Powershell.
Setting focus to window in a virtual machine
Sendkeys On Disconnected RDP Session
One solution seems to be to redirect standard input to the started program which means we don't have to care about focusing the window, but how do I redirect a keypress to a started process with Powershell? (Any other scripting language available in azure pipelines yaml is also ok)
The best solution so far has been
param
(
[string]$appName,
[string]$key
)
$objShell = New-Object -ComObject wscript.shell
$proc = Get-Process $appName
$objShell.AppActivate($proc.Id)
Start-Sleep -Seconds 1
$keyString = "'{" + $key + "}'"
$objShell.SendKeys($keyString)
But as stated, this seems to only work when I have an active RDP connection (and not 100% of the time). I have also tried using SetForegroundWindow which works fine when I run the script on my own computer but not on the VM.
Many thanks
Carl
As the title implies, I'm trying to automate the login process to AzureRMAccount in Powershell.
I've scoured every forum on every website I can find trying every different combination of solutions (well, except for the solution that works).
Every time I try to automate the login process of my Azure account, I get an error :
Unknown User Type
Yes, I have full access to this account, and Yes it does work fine if I omit all of the parameters and allow for the interactive username/password dialog.
I have even tried to simply call the Get-Credentials and push those into a variable and then call Login-AzureRMAccount using those creds....no luck.
Add-AzureRMAccount fails too.
Any help would be appreciated.
I did find one solution, although it's not the most secure solution as it generates a disk file putting your information at risk if someone were to gain access to the machine on which the Powershell code is executing.
You can login interactively and immediately export the context to a json file, Then at a later time, import that json file as the current context to bypass login
PS C:\> Save-AzureRmContext -Profile (Add-AzureRmAccount) -Path C:\test.json
then in a later session, Import the context
PS C:\> Import-AzureRmContext -Path C:\test.json
Again, this is not the most secure option but it did achieve the results. I would love to have a more secure option.
I created PowerShell script wich install an application on computer (windows 7).
This script is in GPO and deployed with GPO at logon users. This worked fine, but I want that at the end of installation, my powershell script send at the current logged user on computer a message like "Reboot your computer please".
I tested many things but I don'tview popup, maybe because my script are execute with admin rights (not with user rights).
Test :
#$wshell = New-Object -ComObject Wscript.Shell
#$wshell.Popup("Operation Completed",0,"Done",0x1)
[Windows.Forms.MessageBox]::Show(“My message”, , [Windows.Forms.MessageBoxButtons]::OK, [Windows.Forms.MessageBoxIcon]::Information)
Your script may be popping up the message but then closing the PowerShell console immediately after, removing the popup. Try waiting on the result of the popup before closing the PowerShell instance:
$wshell = New-Object -ComObject Wscript.Shell
$result = $wshell.Popup("Operation Completed",0,"Done",0x1)
You need to load the assembly providing the MessageBox class first, and you cannot omit the message box title if you want to specify buttons and/or icons.
Add-Type -Assembly 'System.Windows.Forms'
[Windows.Forms.MessageBox]::Show(“My message”, "", [Windows.Forms.MessageBoxButtons]::OK, [Windows.Forms.MessageBoxIcon]::Information)
# ^^
You can use an empty string or $null here, but simply not providing a value (like you could do in VBScript) is not allowed.
As a side-note, I'd recommend avoiding typographic quotes in your code. Although PowerShell will tolerate them most of the time, they might cause issues sometimes. Always use straight quotes to be on the safe side.
Edit: Since you're running the script via a machine policy it cannot display message boxes to the logged-in user, because it's running in a different user context. All you can do is have a user logon script check whether the software is installed, and then display a message to the user. This works, because a user logon script running in the user's context.
I want to write a Powershell script that will validate a large number of service accounts that was provided to me by my AD team. Not that I don't trust them but I want to cycle thru each domain username and password to see if it logs in or fails. I am looking for some suggestions so far my attempts have failed (see post http://tjo.me/fKtvPM).
Thanks
P.S. I don't have access to AD so I have to try to login using the credentials to test.
This is really hacky (ugly for least-privileged model), but if you know that all of the service accounts have access to a particular program / file, you can try to start a process using their credentials.
$cred = get-credential # however you're getting the info from AD team, pass it hear to get-credential
start-process powershell -argumentlist "-command","exit" -cred (get-credential)
$? # if $true, process started (and exited) successfully, else failed (either bad creds or account can't access powershell.exe
Unfortunately, since you can't query AD directly, I think any solution is going to be a bit of a hack, since by definition you're going to have to simulate logging in as the user account.