You can monitor software that clients attempt to start, and permit or prevent programs from starting according to specified conditions.

For example, you can suppress startup of programs that are not needed for your company's work or suppress all programs other than the ones provided by JP1/Software Distribution, and permit startup of specified programs only.

The following figure provides an overview of suppressing software startup.

Figure 2-22 Overview of suppressing software startup

Software whose startup is to be monitored and its path are referred to as a monitoring target program. You can specify programs with the following file extensions as monitoring target programs:

• exe
• com
• scr

To monitor startup of a program, you must specify its file name or formal file name.

In the case of a monitoring target program whose startup is suppressed, you can also specify conditions (called permitted conditions) to be used to determine when startup of the program is to be permitted. Because you can specify a user type and time as start conditions, you can, for example, allow game programs to start only during lunch hours. If a specified time span is set as the permitted condition, the program stops when the time is over. You can also display a termination warning dialog box before the program stops.

If APPLocker and JP1/Software Distribution suppress startup of the same software when the client's OS is Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2, APPLocker suppresses startup first. Consequently, startup suppression history cannot be collected. Neither the Suppress Startup dialog box nor the Pre-alert Notification dialog box is displayed.

In this section, when there is no need to differentiate between the Suppress Startup dialog box and the Pre-alert Notification dialog box, they are generically referred to as warning dialog boxes.

Note on suppressing software startup

If the client's OS is Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012, dialog boxes related to startup suppression appear on the desktop.

Notes on virtual environments

Note the following when you suppress software startup in a virtual environment:

• The display of the warning dialog box differs as described below, depending on the software startup method and the OS.
  
  • When a user directly starts the software
    The dialog box is displayed to the user who starts the software.
    
  • When a service starts the software
    In Windows Server 2003, if there is a user who has logged onto a console session, the dialog box is displayed to that user. If no user has logged onto a console session, the dialog box is not displayed anywhere.
    In Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2008, the dialog box is not displayed.