September, 2004

Hey, Scripting Guy! I’m looking for a script that can get the memberships of two different groups, compare them, and then write out the differences. Can you help? -- LS Hey, LS. When we received your question a week or so ago we thought, “That’s a...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I tell which service packs have been installed on my computers? -- FR Hey, FR. That’s a very good question; as you know better than we do, in this day and age it’s really important to make sure all your computers have the...

Hey, Scripting Guy! In Device Manager, any time a device isn’t working that device is marked with a yellow exclamation mark. How can I use a script to get a list of the devices that aren’t working? -- OL Hey, OL. Sometimes in baseball a batter absolutely...

Hey, Scripting Guy! If I have the PID, is there a way to kill a process using a script? -- JV Hey, JV. You bet there is. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the acronym, PID is short for Process Identifier, a unique ID number assigned to a process...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How do I get a list of the Exchange servers (msExchHomeServerName) assigned to the users in an OU? -- BG Hey, BG. As you probably already figured out, you have two issues: you need to get a list of all the users in an OU, and then...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How do I get multiple lines of output in a Web page using the Document.Body.InnerHTML property? I can only get one line of output on my page. -- CM Hey, CM. Sounds like you’re creating an instance of Internet Explorer and trying...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Is there an easy way to manage scheduled tasks using scripts? -- RC Hey, RC. You just had to ask that question, didn’t you? To be honest, this is not one of scripting’s strong points, and you might be more confused after hearing...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Is there any way to use WMI to determine whether a computer is a laptop or a desktop machine? -- CB Hey, CB. You bet there is, although if you didn’t know that we have no idea how you’d figure it out on your own. It turns out there...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I tell if a computer has a DVD drive installed? -- GC Hey, GC. No doubt you’re hoping we’ll say something like, “Why, you just use the Win32_DVD class, of course.” Unfortunately, though, we can’t say that; that’s because...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How do I bind to a user account when the user is in a sub-OU? Code like this doesn’t work: LDAP://CN=Ken Meyer, OU=NA\Human Resources, DC=fabrikam, dc=com. -- RD Hey, RD. The past few days we’ve done some lengthy answers to questions...

I know that I can use the Split command to separate a sentence like this - VBScript is fun! - into an array of individual words. However, what happens if I have a sentence like this: VBScript is fun! I can’t use a blank space as the delimiter because...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I’d like to have a script that accepts computer names as command-line arguments and then runs against each of those computers. However, if you don’t enter any command-line arguments, I’d like it to default to running against the local...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a script that pings a computer before it tries to connect to it. The script works fine on Windows XP, but doesn’t work at all on my Windows 2000 computers. Do you have any idea why? -- AK Hey, AK. As a matter of fact, we...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I’m trying to use a LIKE query in my WMI scripts. The query works fine on Windows XP computers, but I can’t get it work on Windows 2000 computers. Do you know what I’m doing wrong? -- GS Hey, GS. Actually you’re not doing anything...

We have services that run under a particular user account. Each time we change the password for that user account, we need to change the password for any services that run under that account as well. But how can we tell which account a service is running...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a text file that contains a bunch of IP addresses. I’d like to be able to read these addresses from a script, and then use them to connect to those computers. Is that possible? -- RL Hey, RL. You bet you can do this, and...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I determine the version number of an executable file? -- TW Hey, TW. Well, that depends. If the file is located on the local computer, the easiest way is to use the FileSystemObject. Have a burning desire to know which version...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Is there any way to tell whether or not a server has rebooted? -- MvdM Hey, MvdM. We’re assuming that you’re performing a task and, at the end of the task, the computer is supposed to reboot. Needless to say, you want to know, ...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I be notified any time a service goes down? -- RN Hey, RN. As usual, there are a couple different ways you can do this, but perhaps the simplest approach is to create a script that monitors WMI events. We don’t have time...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I enumerate all the objects in an Active Directory OU? -- RB Hey, RB. By the way, thanks: it’s always nice to get an easy question every once in awhile! Enumerating all the objects in an OU is almost embarrassingly-simple...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Can I create a folder on a remote computer using a script? -- AN Hey, AN. Life is full of mysteries. To name one, what possessed somebody to think that the world was clamoring for Clamato juice, an unholy concoction combining tomato...