API Programming

You know how whenever you login to your Windows box you always see a message saying “Applying computer settings…” and it can sit there for what feels like forever!!! Well it annoyed me to no end, I wanted to find out what it really meant and see if there was a way to tell me what sort of voodoo Microsoft was running on my machine. So after a quick search I found 2 Microsoft KB articles, kb325376 and kb316243. Now, I have a meaningful description like applying group policy, playing log off sound, etc…

After running the following registry script on my machine, I can get a verbose output.

There are two ways to set this in the registry, Option 1

1. Open the registry by clicking start, run, typing regedit.exe then clicking ok.
2. Navigate to the following subkey

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system

3. Right click to create a new "DWORD Value"
4. Title the new DWORD key VerboseStatus
5. Double click VerboseStatus and make sure it has a "Value data" of 1
6. Close the registry, you’re done.

Windows Registry Editor for Verbose Output

Option 2 to create this setting is by copying and pasting the following code into a registry file called VerboseOutput.reg.

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Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
 
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system]
"VerboseStatus"=dword:00000001

This registry hack can be applied to the following Microsoft boxes…

• Microsoft Windows XP Professional
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Edition
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition for Itanium-Based Systems
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition for Itanium-based Systems
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (32-bit x86)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition (32-bit x86)
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition (32-bit x86)
• Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 Standard Edition
• Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition