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<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE topic PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
<topic xml:lang="en-us" id="autostart-windows">
<title>Windows: Starting the Autostart Service</title>
<body>
<p>
On Windows, autostart functionality consist of two components.
The first component is a configuration file where the
administrator can both set a delayed start for the VMs and
temporarily disable autostarting for a particular user. The
configuration file should be located in a folder accessible by
all required users but it should have permissions allowing only
reading by everyone but administrators. The configuration file
contains several options. The <codeph>default_policy</codeph>
controls whether the autostart service allows or denies starting
of a VM for users that are not in the exception list. The
exception list starts with <codeph>exception_list</codeph> and
contains a comma separated list with usernames. Furthermore, a
separate startup delay can be configured for every user to avoid
overloading the host. A sample configuration is given below:
</p>
<pre xml:space="preserve"> # Default policy is to deny starting a VM, the other option is "allow".
default_policy = deny
# Bob is allowed to start virtual machines but starting them
# will be delayed for 10 seconds
bob = {
allow = true
startup_delay = 10
}
# Alice is not allowed to start virtual machines, useful to exclude certain users
# if the default policy is set to allow.
alice = {
allow = false
}
</pre>
<p>
The user name can be specified using the following forms:
"user", "domain\user", ".\user" and "user@domain". An
administrator must add the
<codeph>VBOXAUTOSTART_CONFIG</codeph> environment variable
into system variables containing the path to the configuration
file described above. The environment variable tells the
autostart services which configuration file is used.
</p>
<p>
The second component of autostart functionality is a Windows
service. Every instance of this works on behalf of a particular
user using their credentials.
</p>
<p>
To enable autostarting for a particular user, a member of the
administrators group must run the following command:
</p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxAutostartSvc install --user=<varname>user</varname> [--password-file=<varname>password_file</varname>]</pre>
<p>
The password file should contain the password followed by a line
break. The rest of the file is ignored. The user will be asked
for a password if the password file is not specified.
</p>
<p>
To disable autostarting for particular user, a member of the
administrators group must run the following command:
</p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxAutostartSvc delete --user=<varname>user</varname>
</pre>
<p>
If a user has changed their password then a member of the
administrators group must either reinstall the service or change
the service credentials using Windows Service Manager. Due to
Windows security policies, the autostart service cannot be
installed for users with empty passwords.
</p>
<p>
Finally, the user should define which VMs should be started at
boot. The user should run the following command for every VM
they wish to start at boot:
</p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxManage modifyvm <varname>VM name or UUID</varname> --autostart-enabled on</pre>
<p>
The user can remove a particular VM from the VMs starting at
boot by running the following command:
</p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">VBoxManage modifyvm <varname>VM name or UUID</varname> --autostart-enabled off</pre>
<note>
<p>
On Windows hosts, starting VMs via the autostart service might
cause some issues, as the virtual machines are starting within
the same session as VBoxSVC. For more information see
<xref href="vboxsvc-session-0.dita#vboxsvc-session-0"/>.
</p>
</note>
</body>
</topic>
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