I want a random number to be generated every time I start my computer so I can randomly choose a background on rainmeter. Every time I try to search for an answer I keep getting pages for how to make rainmeter run on startup.
You can use the RunCommand plugin to execute a command line input.
To make it run once when the skin is loaded, you just need to set option UpdateDivider=-1.
The following opens Notepad on startup, replace it in Parameter=Notepad with the command you wish to run.
[Rainmeter]
Update=1000
[MeasureRunCmd]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=RunCommand
Parameter=Notepad
[MeterRunCmd]
UpdateDivider=-1
Meter=String
Text=None
OnUpdateAction=[!CommandMeasure MeasureRunCmd "Run"]
If you don't need the extra flexibility of that plugin you can just use the following
[Rainmeter]
Update=1000
[MeterRunCmd]
UpdateDivider=-1
Meter=String
Text=None
OnUpdateAction=["Notepad"]
I just became acquainted with Rainmeter about 3 hours ago. But here's a thought:
Any "app" (or even a shortcut to an app) that's in "C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup" will run at ... uhh? ... STARTUP! (that's it!). Now, since cmd.exe runs as conhost.exe before the startup folder is processed, that means we can use the "DOS" (I'm an old fart) %RANDOM% variable.
So, if Rainmeter can handle system variables in ".ini" files then you can use %Random% directly (Enter %RANDOM% at the command prompt and you'll see a different number returned everytime). Also, Google %RANDOM% (case, like size, does matter) to see the tweaks used to get any range of numbers you desire.
If Rainmeter can't handle system variables directly then write a 1 line ".bat" file that "set"s the random number to a string (or whatever you can use) and stick the batch file (or a shortcut to it) in the startup folder.
I can't think of a reason why this easy method (or your own enhanced version of it) won't work.
Good luck. Interesting idea. Let me know how you make out.
Related
I am using the tool 'HTML Match' to compare two HTML files. As I have to compare many files, I create a batch file like the followion. For example, I give only five sets of files.
cd "C:\Program Files\HTML Match"
HTMLMATCH.EXE "D:\Raj\compare1\a1.html" "D:\Raj\compare2\a1.html" "D:\Raj\compare_res\a1.html"
HTMLMATCH.EXE "D:\Raj\compare1\a2.html" "D:\Raj\compare2\a2.html" "D:\Raj\compare_res\a2.html"
HTMLMATCH.EXE "D:\Raj\compare1\a3.html" "D:\Raj\compare2\a3.html" "D:\Raj\compare_res\a3.html"
HTMLMATCH.EXE "D:\Raj\compare1\a4.html" "D:\Raj\compare2\a4.html" "D:\Raj\compare_res\a4.html"
HTMLMATCH.EXE "D:\Raj\compare1\a5.html" "D:\Raj\compare2\a5.html" "D:\Raj\compare_res\a5.html"
When I execute this batch file in a cmd prompt, only the first line, that is, only 'a1.html', gets compared and produces a result. Then execution stops.
Add call in front of the commands you're running.
You can also change this to a for loop, so:
FOR /L %%i in (1,1,5) DO CALL HTMLMATCH.EXE D:\Raj\compare%%i%%\a%%i%%.html D:\Raj\compare%%i%%\a%%i%%.html D:\Raj\compare_res\a%%i%%.html
The answer to your problem is to write CALL HTMLMATCH.EXE (and the rest of the parameters).
Just use CALL in front of every executable command in the batch file.
I was looking for something really similar and tried, I think, all the replies left here but I finally found the solution to my problem!!
In my script I want to check if one process is running, if not, start it (a .exe) and then check if another process is running, if not, start it too (but leave all the programs opened) and the problem is that the first .exe was started but then not moving to the second one because it was waiting until the process ended.
It´s finally working for me with start and the magic comes with...
/separate
it works for me as:
start "program1" /separate program1.exe
other commands
Before it stopped after starting program1 because it was waiting until it was closed, I think, but this was not going to happen because I wanted to leave it opened.
Now with the start /separate it continues with the other commands.
I found it in another forum but the thing is that it´s the manual, /separate is used to start in another memory space.
You don't have to insert quotation marks where there isn't any space mark between.
Try that:
HTMLMATCH.EXE D:\Raj\compare1\a1.html D:\Raj\compare2\a1.html D:\Raj\compare_res\a1.html
Maybe it will solve your issue.
I am creating a batch file which is calling other batch file. Sometimes the second batch file gives an error (because the license for the software I am running is not found). When the error hits, a window pop ups and I need to close manually (undesirable because it needs to run in a loop).
I would like to call the second batch file and if it didn't finish to run after 90seconds, kill it and go to the next line of my first batch file.
Is that possible?
Pause, sleep, timeout, and a few others can help you.
I would suggest timeout.
timeout /t 90
Here's some more info: http://www.wikihow.com/Delay-a-Batch-File
To do exactly what you want you'll have to work in some logic to decide what to do after the timeout, but you will likely use a loop after that. It depends on the structure of your code. Maybe toggle a boolean variable to determine if you want to go to the top of the script.
I have a reasonably large number of .bat files that are launched by the Windows Task Scheduler. And, subsequently, or by an app that's called in the process. In the latter case, the app launches a .bat file to log that it has started and another .bat file to log that it has completed. They all trigger another single logging .bat file that writes to a log file. There a multiple situations that cause them to overlap:
all of the Task Scheduler tasks are manually Run at once
one of the app tasks is still running when another related Task
Scheduler runs on schedule.
So, we sometimes see:
the process cannot access the file because it is being used by another
process.
And, the result of this is that log entries are missed.
Just to be clear:
Task Scheduler tasks:
go1 >>> launches bat_name1.bat
go2 >>> launches bat_name2.bat
etc.
bat_name1.bat, bat_name2.bat,....
CALL log.bat %bat_nameN%
app.exe %bat_nameN%
EXIT
app.exe task:nameN
launches STARTnameN.bat
(runs the core of the app)
launches ENDnameN.bat
STARTnameN.bat and ENDnameN.bat
log.bat %nameN%
log.bat
#ECHO OFF
SET fileloc=C:\Users\Public\BackupLogs
echo %time% %date% %2 %3 %~1>%fileloc%\temp.txt
type %fileloc%\temp.txt>>%fileloc%\backuplog.txt
So the objective would be to allow all these programs to run autonomously but to sequentialize the result so the log files can be completely written without interference.
One thought would be to separate the temp.txt into tempN.txt,... and to append the result to the single backuplog.txt as a part of the ending process. That would likely make it better but doesn't appear to be a 100% solution as there could still be overlaps?
You could test if the append fails and retry via something like:
:try_append
copy /b %fileloc%\backuplog.txt+%fileloc%\temp.txt %fileloc%\backuplog.txt
if errorlevel 1 goto try_append
(copy must be used as internal commands such as echo and type won't set the error level.)
That would improve things, however you'd still have the problem of collision on the %fileloc%\temp.txt file. Perhaps you have a way to easily resolve this using unique temp names in your various .bat files.
If not, better random temp filenames can be created using %time::=% (millisecond randomness), but even that could conceivably collide.
When I want a truly random filename I involve the value of the RDTSC opcode which changes every processor clock cycle making collisions impossible. There are open source tools available to help with this, eg: capture RDTSC opcode. But perhaps that is a topic for another question.
Alright, so, I'm working on a script to execute some commands in an MMC Snapin, and I'm not very experienced with doing this kind of scripting, but i've made a lot of progress...the problem I am having, is if I create a new object every time the script runs, it will massively delay my overall script while the snapin and everything in it loads(which can take as long as five minutes). If it could load the snapin content once and then just take control of it as needed, and only create a new object IF there's not one open already, I'll save a massive amount of time when I run the script sometimes 100 times in a day.
The problem is, I'm not entirely certain how to achieve this. I thought, after some research, that it would be GetObject, but when I do
Dim objMMC
Set objMMC = GetObject("", "MMC20.Application")
It seems to create a new mmc window with no snapins loaded, rather than get the existing one with snapins loaded that I want.
Any advice? Am I just totally off base here, using completely the wrong command, or is there some simple change that I can make to fix this?
Edit:
Is there some weird workaround way I could achieve this, like storing an object to a temporary file so i can at least reuse it through a single session.
I'm in a weird situation where I am trying to add functionality to a powershell script and couldn't find a way to do it directly in powershell, so i'm setting up a vbscript to do one piece of it and calling the vbscript from powershell. I already had to do a lot of research to figure out how to do it in vbscript(and i'm still not sure about all of it) so i guess before i go any further, I'll try to figure out if this is even viable(in vbscript or c# or c++ or any other language someone could suggest)...
What i want to do, overall, is check if an MMC window is open that contains a DHCP snapin. If so, assign it to a variable. If not, create one.
Then it will read from a csv or txt file, and use the values to determine what node to navigate to within the snapin(DHCP>ServerName>IPv4>ScopeName>Scope Options).(I've mostly solved this part in vbscript, but don't know how to do it in C++ or C#)
Finally, I need to be able to execute a right-click menu item to "configure options", navigate the tabs of the popup that comes up, enter a value, and apply the changes/hit ok to close the popup. Worst case, If I can't do it "normally" by actually sending commands to the objects themselves, this part I can do with imitating keystrokes, but i don't want to do that if it's avoidable because it's sloppy.
Then, I basically will just need to somehow alert the powershell script that i'm "finished" so it can continue, or give an alert if there's an error.
I'm not asking anyone to walk me through all this, I just want to know if any of those steps aren't viable as i've described them, especially if I'm going to have to switch to c++ or c# to achieve the first part and therefore relearn the commands needed.
... and only create a new object IF there's not one open already ...
No, this is not possible in VBS, you need to do
Dim objMMC
Set objMMC = WScript.CreateObject("MMC20.Application")
if I create a new object every time the script runs, it will massively delay my overall script
In this case is the VBS the wrong language, you need to use C# or C++ executable.
I came past a few ways to cause a time delay such as pings and dirs. Though none of them are really precise, is there anny proper way to cause a time delay?
I heard about a few things though they don't work on all computers, not on my Windows XP nor the Windows NT at college.
It takes ages going through all files on Google finding a good answer, and since I didn't yet find the question on Stack Overflow I thought it might be good to just create the question myself ;)
Sleep
It will allow you to do this.
<warning>This is a hack</warning>
Use your favorite programming language (other than MS-DOS batch) and create an application which takes one argument, the number of milliseconds to wait, then, simply call this program from a batch file to sleep the required amount.
As far as I know, this is the only reliable way to do it in DOS.
If you don't have the ability to send another program along with the batch file, use DEBUG to write a sleep command on the fly, and execute it.
EDIT:
The above answer was kind of toungue-in-cheek. I wouldn't run a batch file that had some DEBUG trickery in it. I believe the traditional way to use a delay in a batch file is the CHOICE commad.
type nul|choice /c:y /t:y,nn > nul
Which of course, doesn't work in XP, since that would be WAAYY too convenient.
"...proper way...."
you can't do that in DOS.
It is possible to achieve a precision of a few miliseconds, depending on your machine's speed.
I have just finished creating such a batch, and though I won't share with you the actual code, I'll give you some pointers:
Use %time% variable, and devide into substrings (without ":" and ".") - one substring will get the seconds, the other - minutes (you may add hours, for delays of over an hour, and even incorporate the date)
Use set /A to transform the time variables into 1 integer representing the amount of seconds which have passed since a rounded hour (X:00:00.00). Add the inputed delay (in seconds) to that.
Create a short loop, comparing the value of the combined var (explained in section 2) to the current time (need to recalc the curent combined min+sec value, inside this loop), and exiting the loop when the match is true.
One major bugfix here - you'll need to truncate any preceeding zeros to variables which are about to get evaluated in a "set /A" command. I've noticed that the console's evaluator (for this command) returns an error when an integer with a preceeding 08 or 09 (or simply 08 or 09) is used.
Remark:
This will only work with command extensions enabled. To test it, use the following at the beginning of the routine:
verify other 2>nul
setlocal enableextensions
if errorlevel 1 goto err
And then add an error handler subroutine named "err".
If you'd want to continue your batch in the same file, use "endlocal" after the looping subroutine.
BTW, this applies ONLY to Windows XP service pack 2 or 3.