#145419 - 2005-08-11 04:12 PM
Disabling DEP in SP2 using KiX?
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jdogg
Getting the hang of it
Registered: 2003-09-11
Posts: 91
Loc: RTP, North Cakalaka, USA
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Hi all,
In my company, we have not rolled out Windows XP SP2 to the general population yet, but are considering it. One of the two roadblocks to doing this is the problems we experience with our applications and DEP (Data Execution Prevention) (the other roadblock is the built-in firewall that is enabled by default).
There is a way to turn off DEP system wide on a machine, but it requires modifying the critical file boot.ini. Here is the Microsoft article: Article on Disabling DEP Has anyone experimented with this? Has anyone already scripted something to add the AlwaysOff setting in the boot.ini? With my limited scripting expertise, I am very wary of doing ANYTHING to the boot.ini through a logon script (or through any other method for that matter).
I almost put this in the "Discussions" category, but I am first and foremost a "Starter". 
Thanks for any discussion/suggestions. -jdogg
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#145421 - 2005-08-11 04:53 PM
Re: Disabling DEP in SP2 using KiX?
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Bryce
KiX Supporter
   
Registered: 2000-02-29
Posts: 3167
Loc: Houston TX
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Yikes!
i would not do a mass copy of a single boot file to all systems unless you know for a fact that all of your systems boot.ini files are pointing to the same ide drive, channel, partition, and system folder!!
if, you get the path wrong in this line...
Code:
[operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
your computer will not boot!
since this is a INI file, read/writeprofilestring would be the way to go.
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#145423 - 2005-08-11 05:02 PM
Re: Disabling DEP in SP2 using KiX?
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jdogg
Getting the hang of it
Registered: 2003-09-11
Posts: 91
Loc: RTP, North Cakalaka, USA
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Being that the boot.ini can differ on all machines, isn't your method a way to severely cripple all machines? One method I was considering testing was to use WriteLine at the last blank line in the boot.ini and adding the exclusion. It seems like replacing the boot.ini is dangerous, whereas appending to it would be less dangerous (although I would still sweat over this a bit).
Thanks for the FYI on the UDF for SP2 firewall disabling.
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#145424 - 2005-08-11 05:03 PM
Re: Disabling DEP in SP2 using KiX?
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jdogg
Getting the hang of it
Registered: 2003-09-11
Posts: 91
Loc: RTP, North Cakalaka, USA
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Oops... Bryce beat me to it.
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#145425 - 2005-08-11 05:06 PM
Re: Disabling DEP in SP2 using KiX?
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Bryce
KiX Supporter
   
Registered: 2000-02-29
Posts: 3167
Loc: Houston TX
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here is the boot string that you will need to modify..
Code:
$boot = 'c:\boot.ini' $defaultboot = ReadProfileString($boot,'boot loader','default') $DefaultBootString = ReadProfileString($boot,'operating systems',$defaultboot)
? $DefaultBootString
Now i have sp2 installed, so i have "/noexecute=AlwaysOff" installed by default, you will have to do some string checking to see if this switch is not already in the default boot string so you can change it from its dafault setting, or add it if it is not.
Bryce
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#145427 - 2005-08-11 05:11 PM
Re: Disabling DEP in SP2 using KiX?
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Bryce
KiX Supporter
   
Registered: 2000-02-29
Posts: 3167
Loc: Houston TX
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Quote:
Thanks for the FYI on the UDF for SP2 firewall disabling.
You can also set a global setting in group policy for the SP2 firewall.
Bryce
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#145429 - 2005-08-11 05:25 PM
Re: Disabling DEP in SP2 using KiX?
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jdogg
Getting the hang of it
Registered: 2003-09-11
Posts: 91
Loc: RTP, North Cakalaka, USA
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Oooh... nice. Looks like some real options here. Thanks again guys. I am more immediately concerned with the DEP though, since we are upgrading our BlackICE software and DEP doesn't like the new version of BlackICE when installing on a newer machine with a processor that supports hardware-based DEP. So I will work on testing adding/modifying a line in the boot.ini (YIKES!) ("/noexecute=AlwaysOff") Any further suggestions on how to do this (in addition to Bryce's snippet above) would be appreciated since I am a total n00b when it comes to editing existing ini or txt files.
Thanks again!
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