October, 2005

Hey, Scripting Guy! Is there an alternative to the Wscript.Shell command for HTAs? I need to run an application and specify the file to open. -- DL Hey, DL. Yes, we do know of an alternative to the Wscript.Shell command that will work in HTAs, and...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I center an HTA on the screen? -- BH Hey, BH. Well, we have an answer for you, although it’s not perfect: we can resize (if need be) and center your window, but there will be a momentary flash on the screen when all this...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I determine which drives on a computer are mapped to network shares? -- CP Hey, CP. OK, you better sit down, because what we’re about to say will shock you: if you want to determine which drives on a computer are mapped...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I determine which version of Access was used to create an Access database? -- TW Hey, TW. You know, at least one of the Scripting Guys is a bit old-fashioned, to say the least. He doesn’t own a cell phone, and he won’t use...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I read a text file on a remote computer? -- BM Hey, BM. We have a confession to make: we’re using you and your question for our own nefarious purposes. Earlier this week we answered a question about reading the last line...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I get a list of all the users in an OU and its sub-OUs? -- MN Hey, MN. Thanks to either faulty wiring or a neighbor’s fireworks (the investigation was inconclusive), one of the Scripting Guys had the delightful experience...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I configure the Hide From Exchange Address Lists property for all the contacts in a domain? -- MM Hey, MM. You know what the say: you can run, but you can’t hide (especially from Microsoft Exchange!). But what they forgot...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I verify that none of my local user accounts have a blank password? -- TB Hey, TB. To begin with, we should point out that at least some of you won’t need to make this check on computers within your domain; that’s because...

Hey, Scripting Guy! In one of my scripts I display an HTML page with information that I want my users to read. When they’re finished reading that page, they should be able to press a key and have the Web page disappear. However, instead of the Web page...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I check to see if a user is in both group A and group B and, if so, add that user to Group C? -- DH Hey, DH. Good heavens, how are we supposed to know that ?!? Sheesh. Sorry; we just always wanted to say that. Now that...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Each day we have a program that creates a file with a name similar to this: backup_20050607.bak. How can I delete the previous day’s file? -- JC Hey, JC. Hmmm, a script that goes out and automatically deletes whatever happened the...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I verify that a certain folder (C:\TestLog) has files in it and, if so, delete all those files? -- DC Hey, DC. Before we begin we should point out that - when using WMI - it doesn’t matter whether or not a folder has any...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I list all the files in a folder, ordered by creation date? -- CL Hey, CL. You know, if we were ambitious and hard-working, we’d sit down and write you a script that uses WMI to return all the files in a folder. That script...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I remove a group from the local Administrators group? -- SB Hey, SB. One of the Scripting Guys has very vague memories of an old TV show called Branded , in which the hero (played by Chuck Connors) was accused of cowardice...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I build an array from a column of data in Excel? -- AH Hey, AH. Obviously none of the Scripting Guys has any need to go on a diet (perish the thought!), but we do know that one time-honored dieting strategy is the theory...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I set Word’s default file location to be the user’s home directory? -- LD Hey, LD. Ah, memories. There was a period of time when it seemed like every question we answered in this column was a two-part question: we’d always...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I determine which users are using the most disk space on a drive? -- PW Hey, PW. Interesting question. In theory , you could probably do this by retrieving a collection of all the files on a drive, checking the owner, determining...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I query the Active Directory schema for an attribute’s data type and whether it is single-valued or multi-valued? -- MS Hey, MS. You know, this turned out to be one of those questions that drive us crazy: after all, it seemed...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I list all the users in an NT 4.0 domain, along with their description and logon script path? -- HH Hey, HH. Ah, yes NT 4.0. Windows NT 4.0 reminds us of dandelions: it doesn’t matter whether you like dandelions or not,...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I take the last line in a group of text files and paste that information into a Word document? -- JV Hey, JV. You know, one thing we try to do in this column is focus on practical system administration tasks. We’ll deviate...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I determine if an OU has the Group Policy property Block Policy Inheritance box checked? -- PP Hey, PP. You know, sometimes you wait all your life for a situation to arise, and then it never arises. For example, one of the...