Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I set an Active Directory property to NULL? I tried setting the value to an empty string (“”) but it didn’t work. -- JJ Hey, JJ. You know, it’s not like the Scripting Guys to get philosophical; one of the Scripting Guys...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I’d like to be able to open an Excel spreadsheet, get all the information off one of the worksheets, and then save that worksheet data to a comma-separated values file. How can I do that? -- SS Hey, SS. You know, you just...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Is there a way I can be notified any time a network cable gets unplugged on a computer? -- DD Hey, DD. A lot of people, when growing up, had a grandmother or an aunt or someone somewhere who had a house with a big attic, an attic...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Can I create an environment variable using a script? -- OD Hey, OD. WMI is a great technology for scripting, but it has its eccentricities. For example, can you create a process using a script? Of course you can; after all, WMI...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a folder with a bunch of files in it. I need to move all those files; the only problem is that the files need to be moved to different folders depending on their file extensions. For example, I want all the .log files to go...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I get my script to do something interesting while the code executes; you know, how can I display a progress bar or something? -- HD Hey, HD. To begin with, we don’t recommend that you try to use a true progress bar; that...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I determine which USB devices are connected to a computer? -- WM Hey, WM. If you watch a lot of TV - um, not that the Scripting Guys do; we spend our spare time reading the works of Shakespeare, solving differential equations...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I’d like to display a Yes/No message box for a few seconds and then, if no one clicks a button, have the message box disappear and the script perform the default operation. How do I do that? -- JR Hey, JR. Sounds like you need the...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Can I delete a table from a Jet database using a script? -- AK Hey, AK. Of course you can delete a table from a Jet database using a script; after all, you can do anything using a script! Well, OK, maybe not DHCP server stuff...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I’d like to add an Active Directory group to a second group, but only for an hour; after an hour, I’d like remove that group from the second group. Can I do that with a script? -- JW Hey, JW. Well, this is definitely one of the...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I determine which version of Internet Explorer is installed on a computer? -- MG Hey, MG. Probably the best (and definitely the easiest) way to do this is to use WMI; after all, using WMI makes it as easy to get this information...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I get a list of all the domains in a forest? -- NS Hey, NS. Any time you want information about Active Directory your best bet is to go right to the source: simply ask Active Directory to provide you with this information...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I tell whether a file exists on any CD or DVD drive connected to a computer? -- GH Hey, GH. Well, one way to do this would be to search the entire file system - including any mapped network drives - and check to see if a...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I delete a single registry value? I don’t want to delete the entire registry key, just one value. -- BF Hey, BF. Registry terminology can be a bit confusing, thanks in large part to those of us here at Microsoft (we tend...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I tell how many days there are between two dates? For example, if I have a log file that says an application started on January 1, 2005 and that the application ended today, is there a way to determine how many days the application...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I create a folder on the Start menu? I want the folder to be named the same as the %username% environment variable. -- SB Hey, SB. As we are wont to do, we’re going to break this question down into subtasks. We’ll explain...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Awhile back you showed us how to use a File Open dialog box in our scripts. At the same time you said you’d show us how to use a multi-select dialog box. Did you just forget about the multi-select dialog box? -- AA Hey, AA. Yes...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I determine if the C:\Documents and Settings\ %username% \Application Data\Microsoft\Templates folder exists on a computer? -- JM Hey, JM. The FileSystemObject includes a FolderExists method that makes it very easy to check...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a text file that contains a list of computer names. How can I sort that file alphabetically? -- LR Hey, LR. If we wanted to take the easy way out we’d just tell you, “Sorry, you can’t do that.” And we could get away with...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I write binary data to the registry? -- FG Hey, FG. WMI’s Standard Registry Provider includes a method - SetBinaryData - that makes it relatively easy to write binary data to the registry. There’s one little catch to be...

Guy! I would like to be able to open a file, read the first 10 characters, and then rename the file to those 10 characters plus a .txt file extension. How can I do that? -- KA Hey, KA. Ah, for once a text file question that can be answered without...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I tell whether or not a Web page is accessible? -- JW Hey, JW. To tell you the truth, these are the kinds of questions we hate, questions where we don’t know the answer off the top of our heads but where it seems like there...

Hey, Scripting Guy! We have items that we need to track using unique identification numbers. My boss suggested that we use GUIDs for this purpose. Is there any way to create a GUID using a script? -- DX Hey, DX. GUIDs (globally unique identifiers)...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I list all of the files in a folder, as well as all the files in any subfolders of that folder? -- MA Hey, MA. This is a question we get asked quite a bit, and one which have avoided answering up till now. That’s because...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I count the number of times a user has logged on to a computer? -- DE Hey, DE. How can you count the number of times a user has logged on to a computer? Good question and, ultimately, the answer might be: you can’t. But...