Showing archive results for 2005

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I remotely start an interactive process?-- IS Hey, IS. Well, the short answer is this: you can’t, at least not on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. On those two versions of Windows any processes started remotely run in a hidden window: those processes can’t be interactive because the user will never see them. The pro...

  Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I return a list of all the users whose user account never expires?-- PG Hey, PG. You know, no one - not even his own mother! - has ever claimed that the Scripting Guy who writes this column is a genius. Needless to say, then, the first time he read this question he thought it said, “How can I return a list of al...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I add a shortcut to the Quick Launch tray?-- ZR Hey, ZR. Before we answer this question we need to first answer a different question. And here’s the answer: Frank “Home Run” Baker, who led the major league in homers four times, even though he never hit more than a dozen home runs in a single season. Oh, wait; wrong qu...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I change a user’s primary group?-- AS Hey, AS. You know, one of the Scripting Guys knows how to make an incredibly rich rocky road brownie, a brownie that’s topped with melted marshmallows and walnuts and chunks of dark chocolate and all sorts of other good stuff. Now, some people might ask whether or not, in the inte...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I increment the last line in a text file; that is, if the last line is 1, indicating we’ve done one backup, I need to increment it to 2, indicating that we’ve now done a second backup.-- TH Hey, TH. If you’ve ever been to a carnival then you’ve no doubt been tempted by some of the sideshow games. Throw a baseball and ...