Commas and semicolons in group policy

[Scott Mitzel]

I'm trying to use group policy to set the LegalNoticeText,
which will be displayed to all of our Windows 2000 users
when they do CTRL+ALT+DELETE to logon to their
workstations. I can successfully do this, provided I
don't have any commas or semicolons in the text.

If I include a comma, any spaces immediately following the
comma are deleted. For example,

text, more text

becomes

text,more text

MS indicates in KB article 258267 that this is a known
problem and you can get around it by enclosing the text in
double quotes. Unfortunately, it appears this only works
if you have less than 512 characters of text. If you have
more than that, it gets truncated.

If I include a semicolon, then the semicolon and
everything that follows is deleted. For example,

text; more text

becomes

text

Does anyone know a way around either of these, short of
not using commas and semicolons? Thanks.

 

[a-davew [MSFT]]

The fix from the KB article doesn't address this, but the
logon banner is limited to 512 characters. Unfortunately
it is not a limitation of using "" around the banner. If you
were to create a logon banner that had no commas, it
would still truncate after 512 characters. This is a known
limit, but there are currently no plans to change this
behavior to increase the size above 512 characters in
Windows 2000, but it has been increased in Windows
2003

David Waldron
MCSE+I, MCP+I, MCDBA, MCSA, MCT
Microsoft Enterprise Support
EPS Directory Services Team
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Scott Mitzel]

David,

Thanks for the info, but as I've continued to play with
this that doesn't appear to be the case. I have a banner
of almost 1300 characters that I can display on my 2000
workstation. Applying it via group policy just formats it
incorrectly, dropping the spaces immediately following any
comma. Adding the double quotes restores the spaces, but
then it truncates at 512.

I've managed to get around the formatting problem by not
using group policy to set this. Instead, I've created
a .reg file with the text, and have used regedit to apply
it. This gives me the entire 1300 characters, and no side
effects from either the commas or the semicolons.

Scott