Rob van der Woude's Scripting Pages

News Archives 2007 Q3

 

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September 28, 2007 Released today: KiXtart 4.60 RC1A.
September 25, 2007 Just released: KiXtart 4.60 RC1.
September 21, 2007 I updated DelTemp.vbs again, it can now also optionally empty IE's browsing history, cookies and/or favorites, and/or Explorer's document history.
September 19, 2007 Scott Wegner found a bug in CMD.EXE's delayed variable expansion, which is described here.
September 17, 2007 I wrote DelFlash.vbs, a VBScript version of my latest batch file. This allows scheduling of the script without the annoying "black square windows" popping up each time the script runs.
September 15, 2007 Ever heard of "Local Stored Objects"?
They're also called "Flash Cookies".
They are explained on Adobe's site.
You probably have several of these LSOs on your computer without even knowing it.
What I don't like about LSOs is that by default they're cross-domain, i.e. every site using Flash can read every Flash Cookie on your computer!
I would recommend using at least Adobe's Global Privacy Settings Panel to disable cross-domain LSOs.
And the paranoid (I suppose I am) can use my DelFlash.bat, which deletes all Flash Cookies without removing the settings (removing the settings file %UserProfile%\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys\settings.sol would restore Macromedia's default settings, i.e. minimal security).
September 13, 2007 Denis St-Pierre sent me this script, written by his colleague Todd Reeves (sent with Todd's consent). The script allows one to create directories, multiple levels deep, all in one go, more or less like CMD.EXE's internal MD command does. VBScript can't do that by default, but with this script you can.

Thanks, Todd and Denis.
September 12, 2007 I added several online virus and security scanners to my Security Tools page.
September 9, 2007 Microsoft has released version 2.5 of its free XML Notepad 2007.

And my father sent me a link to download this great laptop alarm. It is not "hack proof", but any added protection may help.

Thanks, dad.
September 4, 2007 I added a new page to my site:
Tweaks: Strange Windows tweaks & unusual workarounds.

It's not really scripting related, but more about strange "solutions" and workarounds.
August 31, 2007 Jason Carter, Sr. Systems Programmer, Marshall University Computing Services, sent me his PowerShell DHCP Logs Backup script.

Thanks, Jason.

And, released today: KiXtart 4.60 Beta 2A.
August 24, 2007 Released today: KiXtart 4.60 Beta 2.
August 23, 2007 Screenshot of BattRun warning message
I often have to run measurements on my laptop for half an hour or longer, and the last thing I want is the laptop shutting down halfway, due to a drained battery. That's why I wrote BattRun.bat. It checks if the laptop is running on battery power before launching a specified program, and if so it displays a warning message.
Just modify your program's shortcut by prefixing the command line with battrun, e.g.:

BATTRUN.BAT "C:\Program Files\MyProgram\myprog.exe" /OptionalArguments

The batch file will use the executable's parent folder as the startup or working folder.
Since the batch file uses WMIC, the minimum requirement for the OS is Windows XP Professional.

Yesterday's modification to the WriteINI function has been partly reversed by the original authors, who want to be able to actually add keys with empty values.
So we decided to delete keys if the value is "<DELETE_THIS_VALUE>", and I changed the code accordingly.
August 22, 2007 A modification by Johan Pol to the VBScript WriteINI function makes it possible to delete INI keys just by specifying "" for the new value.
August 20, 2007 I Googled around for more information on new WSH 5.7 features. This is what I found so far.

Quoting Michael Harris (MVP):

No new features that I know of - the most likely upgrade advantage is in not publicly disclosed bug fixes and security holes patched.

At least now the WSH version available for older Windows OS versions are more in sync with the WSH version included with Vista.

and

I did find out that the only new feature is a VBScript GetUILanguage function.

uilang = GetUILanguage()

WScript.Echo "uilang: " & uilang

'output...
'
'uilang: 1033


What's odd is that snooping VBScrip.dll embedded typelib info with an object browser doesn't reveal that the GetUILanguage function was added...

To paraphrase my Microsoft source...

The real purpose in 5.7 versions (for WSH et.al.) for pre-Vista platforms was an internal Microsoft move to a common OS component binary code base (and consistent major.minor.build numbers) across supported Windows OS versions. WSH for Win2000/XP/2003 are now synced up with Vista as the latest OS version.

Separate OS specific install packages still exist due to different SFP (System File Protection) requirements for OS component installs.

August 18, 2007 Microsoft released WSH 5.7 for Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003, so I added the download links to my WSH pages.
August 15, 2007 I added a new WSC to my VBScript Scripting Techniques section: Random.wsc (returns multiple true random integers in an array).
Like the RndInt and RndIntArr functions and the Random class, it uses WinHTTP to get true random numbers from random.org.
August 14, 2007 I added a new section to my VBScript Scripting Techniques section: Regular Expressions in VBScript.
August 13, 2007 I added a new class to my VBScript Scripting Techniques section: Random (returns multiple true random integers in an array).
Like the RndInt and RndIntArr functions, it uses WinHTTP to get true random numbers from random.org.
August 11, 2007 I added two new functions to my VBScript Scripting Techniques section: RndInt (returns a single true random integer), and RndIntArr (returns multiple true random integers in an array). Both use WinHTTP to get their random numbers from random.org.
This short explanation tells you why one would go through all this trouble instead of just using the VBScript function Rnd.
August 7, 2007 Written by Keith Lacelle, modified by Denis St-Pierre and myself: the ReadINI and WriteINI VBScript functions to read and write (or even create) INI files.
July 31, 2007 ReadINI.bat has been updated.
The new version contains several improvements by Van Woods (US Army Corps of Engineers, Seattle District), like return codes, whitespace removal and a correction of the returned environment variable.
July 19, 2007 A great trick by Reinhard Irnberger: how to use PUSHD to create a temporary drive mapping.
July 15, 2007 I'll be doing a training this week, so I won't have much time to answer questions.
July 9, 2007 I already updated DelTemp.vbs, it now has a Safe Mode switch to skip TEMP files created after the last reboot.
July 8, 2007 I added DelTemp.vbs, a script to empty the TEMP directory and IE cache, or delete only files older than the specified number of days.
July 4, 2007 Because we all need a hardware, drivers or software inventory every now and then, I added a new page to my Scripting Tools section: Inventory Tools.
July 3, 2007 Like the WhoIs samples before, I created a YahooFX class as well. So guess what's coming next...
This class adds logging/debugging and "translates" the ISO 4217 currency codes back to their official descriptive names.
July 2, 2007 I tried for some time to retrieve currency conversions from Yahoo! Finance's Currency Converter, but after failing several times I finally gave up.
Back to the drawing board.
I found it is much easier to just retrieve the latest exchange rate for 2 currencies and then calculate the rest myself. That is exactly what YahooFX.vbs does.
I also added the YahooTrade( ) function used by this script to my VBScript Scripting Techniques section.

 

Archived News pages
Archived news from 2007 Q2
Archived news from 2007 Q1

 


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