microsoft / microsoft/terminal

Let Terminal auto-detect a busted `AutoRun` value for CMD

Open
#15,658 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Area-TerminalConnection Area-UserInterface Help Wanted Issue-Task Product-Terminal
Dominant language
C++
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

CMD has this magic `AutoRun` reg key that's a gigantic footgun.

* `HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\AutoRun`
* `HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\AutoRun`

Basically, if someone writes a bad value to that, it can mess up CMD.exe real bad. As a real life example: https://github.com/conda/constructor/pull/521

We attempted to patch this in Windows 11. But we'll surely be unable to backport that. While we're maintaining Windows 10 support, it might be nice to return a specific warning for this in Terminal. Something like:

```
if (profileGuid == {cmd} && error == 1 && reg query ....) { write("Hey your AutoRun value might be busted. Go check these reg keys:"); }
```

(for discussion. We can always just say _meh_, since we did fix this for cmd.exe)

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

The issue names no files or tests; begin by tracing Terminal's CMD profile startup error handling, especially the proposed profileGuid and error == 1 path. Check how the two listed AutoRun registry keys can be queried, with done defined as a specific warning that points users to those keys when the matching CMD startup failure occurs.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
cli, operating-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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