News from Rob van der Woude's Scripting Pages

News Page

On this page I'll report on changes to my web site or related news items.

Don't expect a full-blown weblog, more like a list of highlights in shorthand.

For a file based list of changes, indexed daily,^* look at the What's New list.

Note:

Actually, the list is recalculated each time the page is loaded. However, it does so based on the site's sitemap, which is updated on a daily basis.

Use ChangeDetection's button, located at the bottom of each page, to receive an e-mail when that particular page changes, along with a short description of the change.

Note, however, that this could mean subscribing to 418 individual webpages (besides hundreds of source text files), and still you wouldn't get notified of new pages.
By subscribing to this news page only, you'll be notified of all "important" updates and changes and new pages.

Note:

Do not try to subscribe to the What's New list; even without any changed page at all, this list will automatically change every day!

February 1, 2012

• Christopher A. LaRue sent me a message stating that GetUnins.vbs, a script to list or search uninstall commands, skipped 32-bit software in 64-bit Windows.
He also knew where to look for the missing info in the registry: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall.
So the updated GetUnins.vbs now checks if the computer to be investigated runs 64-bit Windows, and if so, als searches the Wow6432Node keys.
While at it, I also updated GetUninstall.bat.

Thanks Christopher

January 13, 2012

• Today is Blame Someone Else Day!

• Steve Robertson reported that the 0 byte configuration file bug in Hardware.hta still wasn't fixed completely: it would still sometimes generate an error message in case a 0 byte Hardware.cfg configuration file was created using the "Settings" button.
I "solved" it by immediately deleting it if its size is 0 bytes after saving it.

Thanks Steve

January 9, 2012

• Steve Robertson reported a bug in Hardware.hta: it would generate an error message in case a 0 byte Hardware.cfg configuration file was found.
While working on the fix, I discovered and fixed another bug in the Print function: IE9 somehow "spontaneously" decided to require the IE object to be visible before displaying a print preview.

Thanks Steve

January 7, 2012

• Eugeniu Tricolici found a bug in BootDisk.bat: it would return the last bootable drive listed by the WMIC query, which is not always the drive we are looking for (i.e. in his case it would return a bootable USB stick).
He suggested a break in the loop, effectively using the first partition listed by WMIC instead of the last one. This may work in his case, but may lead to new errors on other systems.
So, instead, I modified the WMIC query: it now returns the last bootable primary partition listed by WMIC; still not 100% fool-proof, but better than before, it will suffice in most cases.

Thanks Eugeniu

January 5, 2012

• Hardware.hta has been updated: it now has print functionality (command line as well as GUI).

• RoboMove.bat has been updated too: it now displays its progress, and the code has been simplified (or optimized).

January 1, 2012

• Happy New Year!