rdesktop issue with pre-logon shell scripting in windows 2008

Hi all,

I have been using rdesktop and its -s option which allows me the ablility to start a remote desktop in a different shell (cmd.exe) and run a set of commands like mapping a local network drive x.... as seen below.

mine@myComp: rdesktop -r disk:local="DirectoryToMapTo/" -s "cmd.exe /K net use x: \\tsclient\local" -u username -p paswrd
x.xxx.x.xxx:xxxx

This command works in almost all windows OS and what happens is it will make the default or "start-up" shell be the cmd.exe and then will automatically run the net use commands and so on. But with my Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter OS, I run this same command and it boots into the explorer.exe shell and doesnt run the commands. To do a quick fix for this for which I thought would solve the problem, I added the key "shell" as a "REG_SZ" type with "cmd.exe" data to the HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/winlogon registry. This made the remote desktop boot into the cmd.exe shell. However, this is the tricky part. I cannot find what to change to make the initial commands (net use... etc) from the -s to work. Can anyone help? I have broken the problem down to be one of the 3: 1) a registry key that is not set correctly. 2) A windows bios bootup protocol change. 3) or any of thousands of other possible problems that I over looked for a datacenter OS haha. Does anyone at least know where the change log is for the windows OSs are or something similar that can tell me what changes to investigate in the windows 2008 R2 Datacenter OS? Any thoughts are appreciatted

~The WolfSon

hi WolfSon

Did you have any solution found to this issue? We are also using this option to automate our build process from sun os to windows servers. its also works fine with 2003 servers, but we have problems with windows 7 and also 2008 server.
Any suggestion ?

Thanks
ksen