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At work, they have this stupid banner that starts up automatically when the user logs in. It isn't programmed well, gets in the way and is generally annoying, so I kill it through the Task Manager, everyday. I want to programmatically stop it or kill it on startup.

My main problem is, I am not 100% sure how it is started and I don't have access to a registry viewer (and they disable regedit) to find out, but even if I could, I doubt I would have permission to edit the setting.

I have tried putting a batch script in my startup folder with the following:

taskkill /IM banner.exe

Problem there is, sometimes my script gets executed before banner.exe starts.

What is the best solution for stopping or killing this application automatically?

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4 Answers

up vote 0 down vote accepted

It really depends where it starts from as windows will load services before things in the startup folder for example... Within task manager you used to be able to schedule tasks to run after logging in - see if you can do this with a time delay after you logged in, say 10/20 seconds (really depends on your startup speed).

The banner.exe is probably started by a logon script or a group policy.

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Thanks for the accepted answer, care to elaborate how you went about disabling the banner? – HaydnWVN Nov 23 '11 at 14:28
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Added a delay to stop it. Seems to work every time now. Sorry for the delay, never got a notifications of the comment. – steveo225 Jan 26 at 22:23
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It may well be that the program startup is defined in Group Policy. In order to find this out and as long as you're not locked down there are two ways of finding this out: rsop.msc and gpresults.

rsop.msc (resultant set of policies) can be run from the run box or search box and gpresult can be run from the command prompt. To check local policies type gpresult /H gpresult.html and this will output to either the root drive or somewhere in your My Documents. This will generate an HTML file listing all policies applied to you or your computer.

If there's a policy set it's likely to be in Computer Configuration, Policies, Adminstrative Templates, System and then Logon.

But don't quote me on that :)

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Permission is denied to rsop.msc and gpresult doesn't appear to have a /H option (for my version at least). – steveo225 Nov 15 '11 at 15:15
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up vote 1 down vote

Maybe you should delete that exe file and create folder with the same name to prevent it from being downloaded and run. Also you may try to revoke access to it using

CACLS filename /G username:W

File is still on disk, but not readable/executable. Only writable/deletable.

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I can run cacls however, all changes result in permission denied. – steveo225 Nov 15 '11 at 15:22
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up vote 0 down vote

Have you looked in Start > All Programs > Startup? (Assuming Windows XP) Or can you run msconfig?

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msconfig is also disabled and there isn't anything in the startup folder – steveo225 Nov 15 '11 at 13:56
Is it Windows XP? – Karmik Nov 15 '11 at 13:58
Depends on where I sit down, but generally Windows XP and sometimes Vista. Although they have started to upgrade everything to 7 – steveo225 Nov 15 '11 at 14:01
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Sounds like you're pretty locked down. I know I'd make it so you couldn't disable it without admin rights. – Karmik Nov 15 '11 at 14:02
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