Automatically Remove CSNW from Win2K

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In the past few years, Microsoft has urged clients to migrate from Novell NetWare to Windows 2000. Migration tools for servers are available from Microsoft and third-party vendors. However, tools for removing Client Service for NetWare (CSNW) from workstations are scarce. Searching Microsoft's Web site for help in removing this service yields only the standard GUI process that you need to perform locally on each workstation, which is a tedious process if you have many workstations. The Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit's Netset utility will remove CSNW but requires the user to have local Administrator privileges. In addition, the documentation for the .inf file that you need to use with Netset is poor.

Windows Server 2003's Netcfg utility is better than Netset at removing CSNW. To use Netcfg to remove CSNW from as many workstations as necessary, add the code that Listing 1, page 16, shows to KiXtart's logon script. Then, run the KiXtart script that Listing 2, page 16, shows. Web Listing 1 (http://www.winscriptingsolutions.com, InstantDoc ID 39855) shows the VBScript code that Listing 2 calls. You need to create a domain group to use during the removal process. You can add users or other groups to the domain group to stage the removal process across your enterprise. The domain group in my scripts is CSNW.

When a user who is a member of the CSNW domain group logs on, the procedure generates the Novell Client Removal pop-up box. After Netcfg starts, the user receives a command window that says Trying to uninstall MS_NWCLIENT. The VBScript code waits for the Netcfg command to finish before it reboots the client workstation. When the reboot process starts, the user sees a dialog box that warns that the computer will reboot. After rebooting, the workstation no longer has CSNW or the associated IPX network protocols installed.

—Dennis Ervin
[email protected]