PowerShell, Active Setup and running a SCCM package “before log on”

I have been struggling with the following idea for a while: How to run a package before before a person logs on using SCCM. There is a setting in SCCM that runs when no one is logged on, but if a person reboots and logs on before SCCM fires, the package will never run. Basically I wanted the ability to make SCCM work like Software Deployment in AD (AD prevents you from logging on until software is completely installed).

The missing piece, for me, was “Active Setup”. Active Setup is pretty well documented here. Combining Active Setup with PowerShell and SCCM, I believe I can run packages before people log on (or at least before they launch any programs).

Here are my steps

• Step 1 : I need to create an Active Setup registry entry on everyone’s machine that will run a PowerShell script
• I created this PowerShell script to create the Active Setup registry entries. This will put a StubPath that launches the PowerShell script.
• Step 2 : Pop up an info message telling the user we are doing some work before the finish logging in.
• I am using this PowerShell script to display a dialog box
• Step 3 : Launch the SCCM Advertised program that you want. Since Active Setup is running as the user, you have to use SCCM to run anything that needs “administrative privileges”. The following code is used inside a PowerShell script to launch an advertisement on the local machine (you need to know the ProgramID and the PackageID):

Function JBMURPHY-SCCM-UIExecuteProgram {
 Param([parameter(Mandatory = $true)]$ProgramID,
       [parameter(Mandatory = $true)]$PackageID)
 $UIResource = New-Object -ComObject UIResource.UIResourceMgr
 $UIResource.ExecuteProgram($ProgramID, $PackageID,$true)
}

Kinda complicated, but I think it will work. Have you used these methods?