Troubleshooting RunOnce - how to determine why some (not all) entries FAILED to fire?

July 23, 2007

Hi folks, I've been investigating the root cause for a critical issue

WorkItem/View.aspx?WorkItemId=2401).

Ever since I received my (heavily-managed) corporate laptop at work,

I've been unable to get Windows XP to launch all the entries in

RunOnce that CacheMyWork adds. In fact, it's consistently been unable

to launch more than 1-3 of the 5-10 entries that I'll typically

populate with the tool.

Here's what I know so far:

- On other Windows XP and Windows Vista systems, the same version of

CacheMyWork will result in RunOnce entries that all launch at next

logon

- on the failing system, the entries are still being properly

populated into the Registry - after running the app, I've checked and

the entries under RunOnce are there as expected and appear to be well-

formatted

- the Event Log (System and Application) doesn't log any records that

refer even peripherally to RunOnce, let alone that there are any

problems or what might be causing them

- After rebooting and logging on, Windows will launch at least *one*

of the RunOnce entries each time - it's not like they have either (a)

all disappeared since the last logoff or (b) are all misformatted

(which implies that the formatting is fine for all of them).

Here's what I've tried so far:

- UserEnv logging - added HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT

\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\UserEnvDebugLevel = 30002 (hex). This is

able to show that the processes I'm observing are firing up correctly,

but there is nothing in the log that contains "runonce" or the names

of the missing processes, and I haven't spotted any entries in the log

that point me to any problems with the RunOnce processing.

- ProcMon boot-time logging - I've got over 3.3 million records to

scan through, so while I haven't found anything yet, it could take a

while to be definitive.

Thanks all, Mike

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