Wanted to see if anyone knows why psexec.exe wouldn't work on WinPE2?

Running the same command line that will work on my workstation, I get this error on WinPE2:

Couldn't access 10.x.x.x:

Access is denied.

And I can ping the box at the IP.

Any thoughts?

Edited November 1, 200718 yr by Jazkal

what services are running?

after much googling, found that the local user account you are running psexec from cannot have a blank password. Windows wont let you run anything remotely if the account the request comes from has a blank password.

So now how do I set the local WinPE2 user account password? Much less how do I determine what account it uses?

I believe the default account is Administrator, as it is in the command prompt title. After invoking a net user command in the PE environment it shows two accounts: Administrator and Guest. I tried using net user Administrator * to set the password. It reports that the password is saved, but psexec still doesn't work.

Thanks for the info. I just need to figure out why it won't work. I'll mess with it on Monday.

After further testing, it looks like WinPE uses the "NT Authority\System" account as the logged in 'user'.

All my searching online tells me that you can't/don't want to change this accounts password (which by default does not have a password).

So I need to find a way to use something like su.exe or runas.exe.

That is what I am currently looking at now.

EDIT:

To be able to use RunAs.exe and run psexec as the Administrator account, I will need to add these rights to that account:

"Act as part of the operation system"

"Logon as a batch job"

Anyone know how to do 'User rights assignment' via command line?

Edited November 7, 200718 yr by Jazkal

ntrights.exe, part of the Windows Resource Kit. I haven't tried to use it in PE, but that is the way to modify it via command line.

After I reset the Admin password, I used:

ntrights.exe -u Administrator +r SeBatchLogonRight

ntrights.exe -u Administrator +r SeTcbPrivilege

But I still get access errors. Arrrgggg