I have a batch file that uses this idiom (many times) to read a registry value into an environment variable:
FOR /F "tokens=2* delims= " %%A IN ('REG QUERY "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Path\To\Key" /v ValueName') DO SET MyVariable=%%B
(There's a tab character after delims=)
This works fine on thousands of customer's computers. But on one customer's computer (running Windows Server 2003, command extensions enabled),
it fails with 'REG QUERY "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Path\To\Key" /v ValueName' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.' Running the "reg query" command alone works fine. Reg.exe is present in C:\Windows\System32.
I was able to work around the problem by changing the code to
REG QUERY "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Path\To\Key" /v ValueName > temp.txt
FOR /F "tokens=2* delims= " %%A IN (temp.txt) DO SET MyVariable=%%B
This got the customer up and running, but I would like to understand why the problem occurred so I can avoid it in the future.
Slightly off the primary topic - a more direct way to get a registry value (string or DWORD) into an environment variable would also be useful.
I would check:
The customer's role on the machine - are they an admin?
Where is reg.exe on the box - is there more than one copy of copy of reg.exe in the path?
Is there any locale difference on the customer's machine from the machines where this normally works?
Basically, enumerate everything that differs between this machine and machines where it works as expected. Include service packs, domain membership, etc.
Wow, that is odd.
If the same commands work when split into two lines, then I'd guess it has something to do with the way the command gets run in a subshell in the FOR command.
If you were really dying to figure out why it's dying in this particular case, you could run commands like "SET > envvars.txt" as the FOR command and compare that with the top shell.
Or maybe start off simple and try running the REG command via CMD /C to see if that does anything?
One quick guess here, what's the values of COMSPEC and SHELL ?
I had a similar situation to this. In my case it was a bad value in COMSPEC. I fixed that and the script started working as expected.
The /F switch needs command extensions to be turned on. Usually they are turned on by default, but I'd check that. On XP systems you can turn them on doing something like
cmd /e:on
or checking the registry under
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\EnableExtensions
Dunno about Windows Server.
Doing help for and help cmd could provide some hints as well.
Related
For whatever reason, this:
reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\BeginSecond
/v begin-second /t REG_DWORD /f
/d "%HOMEDRIVE%\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Desktop\bat script\begin-second"
Line feeds were added for readability, the command itself is one continuous line.
Produces the message "Invalid command-line parameters" when the program is run. The command before that adds the registry key "BeginSecond", so that's not the issue...
But, for some strange reason, this command worked perfectly fine before I booted up my Windows 2000 virtual machine today.
There is probably some super easy fix for this. Any help, please?
I have written a batch script in an interactive mode, for making some tasks.
Sometimes, These tasks takes a long time to be finished, and then the batch asks if the user wants to go on to the next task, or back to the Batch's Main Menu or... etc
Now, what I want to do, is to add an "Interactive Alarm" command, that sounds a small short beep (Ex: Like the one when we turn on our PCs), to alert the batch user for new questions .
I don't know if this is possible or not, but the most important thing for me, NOT to use a GUI application like WMP or so..
I just want to do this from the Background, even If that beep has to be made from the free speaker, or by using a Third-Party CLI Application (Btw, I've Cygwin installed on my Win7-x64) .
Please note that, I will add that alarm command exactly before the interactive questions, waiting for user's answer to get to the next stage, so I can't just finish the batch, by making a real error beep !
So, would somebody please tell me how to do this ?
Appreciate your help :)
WARNING: rundll32.exe Kernel32.dll,Beep 750,300 no longer works well from the command line on modern windows systems as rundll32 no longer accepts integer values (again, through the command line) and this will play the beep with the default values which is too long (and frequency is irritating):
REM Again, with warnings about running this from the command line...
rundll32.exe Kernel32.dll,Beep 750,300
or
rundll32.exe cmdext.dll,MessageBeepStub
or
rundll32 user32.dll,MessageBeep
With rundll functions you won't need special symbols like ^G. With the first method you can also set the frequency and the time you want to beep, though see the warning that those parameters no longer work on modern systems from the command line and will instead play the annoying defaults.
UPDATE
other options are:
powershell "[console]::beep(500,300)"
or using systemSounds.bat
call systemsounds.bat beep
The capability of beeping depends on the mainboard and if the mainboard has a system speaker - which has increasingly become a rarity as systems tend to depend solely on "normal" speakers instead. An alternative is to play sound through those speakers. Here are some options:
Using the speaking capabilities of the SAPI.SpVoice:
mshta "javascript:code(close((V=(v=new ActiveXObject('SAPI.SpVoice')).GetVoices()).count&&v.Speak('beep')))"
Here this is wrapped in a batch file and the words can be passed as an argument.
SAPI.SpVoice can be used for playing wav files and you have some packaged with the default Windows installation. You can use this script:
spplayer.bat "C:\Windows\Media\Windows Navigation Start.wav"
Another option: Using the windows media player active-x objects to play a sound. On Windows XP it was not installed by default but I think for the newer Windows versions it is. It also can play mp3 files:
call mediarunner.bat "C:\Windows\Media\Ring03.wav"
And one that is a little bit obscure - using the <bgsound> tag from internet explorer (which also can play mp3 files). Here's the script:
call soundplayer.bat "C:\Windows\Media\tada.wav"
And here's a way to use the BEL character to produce sound with easy to copy-paste code (I've called it a beeper.bat):
#echo off
setlocal
::Define a Linefeed variable
(set LF=^
%=-=%
)
for /f eol^=^%LF%%LF%^ delims^= %%A in (
'forfiles /p "%~dp0." /m "%~nx0" /c "cmd /c echo(0x07"'
) do echo(%%A
It's not possible to type the BEL directly in (for example) notepad.
To get it, type echo ^G>>yourbatch.bat on the command line (don't type ^ G, but <Control>-G, which will be shown as ^G on the screen). That puts a strange looking character to the end of your file. That's the BELcharacter 0x007 ("control-G"). Just copy/move it to any echo command, you like. Also
set /p "input=^Ggive value: "
is possible (where the ^G represents that strange char)
The following can be used to issue a beep
without pausing the script
without creating a new line.
without requiring the use of a non-printable character
Echo/| CHOICE /N 2> nul & rem BEL
It is a deliberate misuse of the choice command, that Echo's nothing via a pipe to Choice, causing a non-breaking error. STDERR is redirected to nul, and the default choice prompt is suppressed via the /N switch, meaning no new line is output.
If for some reason you wanted to reuse this annoying tone throughout a script, you could define it as a macro
Set "BEL=Echo/| CHOICE /N 2> nul"
%BEL%
#echo off
echo BEEP.BAT by CSS---
echo PRESS ANY KEY TO HEAR A BEEP...
PAUSE>NUL
ECHO
echo I BEEPED
PAUSE
there is an ASCII control code ^G after the echo. Just copy this code, and save it as ASCII/ANSI using a text editor.
use ECHO command to echo a CTRL G
I think the better solution is echoing a ^G to a file from the cmd prompt and then type that file from within the script, that way you don't need to include control characteres in the batch file itself:
C:\> echo ^G>beep.snd
Now there's an ASCII 007 char in the "beep.snd" file, then from your .bat file all you have to do is type it or copy to the screen:
type beep.snd
or
copy beep.snd con > nul
I tried all the options above in Win 10. I settled with this
powershell.exe [console]::beep(500,600)
So programmatically in node.js it would look like this (python or C would be similar)
require("child_process").exec("powershell.exe [console]::beep(500,600)");
A bit late to the party, but I find this variation on #npocmaka version works for me with Windows 10:
REM This captures the Bell as a variable.
for /f %%g in ('%__APPDIR__%forfiles.exe /p "%~dp0." /m "%~nx0" /c "cmd /c echo 0x07"') do set "bel=%%g"
REM This produces the Bell sound.
set /P "=%bel%"<NUL
This works for me..
there was a special character in line 4 which stackoverflow was omitting,
code's pasted here:
hashb.in/long
and line 5 and 6 can be used interchangeably of course.
I've been working for some time on the installer for my application (using Installshield), and some time ago I came upon the problem, when batch file, that I called using LaunchApplication failed to execute (to be specific - it executed, but in the wrong directory). I decided to dig this issue up and stumbled upon this article. The problem, it turns out, lies within Autorun registry key, which is defined in following matter:
cd /d C:\Blahblah\Yadayada
So, before the batch file was actually executed, this command changed directory.
The batch file is most basic one, something like this:
:start
foo.exe %1 --bar %2 --baz %3
if errorlevel 1 goto fail
ECHO Success
goto end
fail:
ECHO Fail
:end
So, basically this batch file expects that it will be launched from the correct directory, and it's not. I'm append INSTALDIR variable to the batchname in LaunchApplication call, just to be clear, and it works perfectly fine when Autorun key is not set up.
And, well, I finally got to the question - is there any way to provide launch options for individual batch file? I know that providing /d option will render Autorun useless, but it only works only on direct call.
For instance, let's assume that I have batch file with simple 'dir' command (let's call it foo.bat), and my Autorun key is defined as shown above. I run command-prompt with /d option (CMD /d), and then run 'dir' directly I'll get content of the folder I'm currently in (e.g. user folder); BUT, if I launch foo.bat, I'll get contents of C:\Blahblah\Yadayada, because Autorun command will execute first, set default folder, and only after that 'dir' command will be called.
So, personally I see a few options here. First - removing Autorun key, and that would be the most fitting and easiest solution if it had to be applied only for one machine - I can't possibly expect every user to take care of their Autorun key for themselves. Second, which should be applicable for everyone (but which I hadn't tested yet), would be providing path to installation folder as extra parameter to batch file, and then changing directory to that:
:start
%4
cd %5
foo.exe %1 --bar %2 --baz %3
...
Where %4 would be a disk letter and %5 would be a path. This seems to be a solution, but I find it counterproductive that I have to implicitly change path to the folder, given that it works perfectly well when Autorun key is absent.
So, I was wondering if there's any workaround about this Autorun key problem. Maybe, like I've mentioned in the title, kind of /d option for batch file so that when it runs it will override global option from Autorun and will actually launch from the place it's supposed to launch, or some kind of technique like that? Also, maybe there's some kind of option in LaunchApplication() function I'm not aware of?
I need to stop a windows service in a batch file without knowing the name of the service. The only thing I know is that the file running is called SomeServer.exe but the SC command requires the actual name of the service.
Currently I have to scan a config file and perform ugly string operations but I hope there is a smarter way.
Any suggestions?
for /f "tokens=2 delims=," %%a in (
'wmic service get name^,pathname^,state /format:csv ^| findstr /i /r /c:"SomeServer\.exe.*Running$"'
) do sc stop "%%a"
It retrieves the system name, service name, path name and state of the services in csv format. The list is filtered for the required executable name in Running state, splitted using the comma as separator, and the second field (the service name) is used to stop the service
this may be helpfull
http://richarddingwall.name/2009/06/18/windows-equivalents-of-ps-and-kill-commands/
If you’ve ever used Unix, you’ll no doubt be well-aquainted with the
commands ps and kill. On Windows, the graphical Task Manager performs
these roles pretty well, but if you ever find yourself needing to
resort to the command line to kill a process (e.g. for some reason on
the Vista machine I am writing this on Task Manager just sits in the
system tray flashing instead of opening), the Windows equivalents of
ps and kill are tasklist and taskkill:
tasklist /v - equivalent to ps aux
taskkill /f /im ncover* - equivalent to kill -9 ncover*
and there is also pslist http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896682.aspx
edit:
for services use psservice http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897542.aspx
or use the method described here (using the registry) https://stackoverflow.com/a/298823/1342402
When running a command-line script, is it possible to get the name of the current user?
You can use the username variable: %USERNAME%
Username:
echo %USERNAME%
Domainname:
echo %USERDOMAIN%
You can get a complete list of environment variables by running the command set from the command prompt.
Just use this command in command prompt
C:\> whoami
It should be in %USERNAME%. Obviously this can be easily spoofed, so don't rely on it for security.
Useful tip: type set in a command prompt will list all environment variables.
%USERNAME% is the correct answer in batch and other in Windows environments.
Another option is to use %USERPROFILE% to get the user's path, like C:\Users\username.
The answer depends on which "command-line script" language you are in.
Cmd
In the old cmd.exe command prompt or in a .bat or .cmd script, you can use the following:
%USERNAME% - Gets just the username.
%USERDOMAIN% - Gets the user's domain.
PowerShell
In the PowerShell command prompt or a .ps1 or .psm1 script, you can use the following:
[System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent().Name - Gives you the fully qualified username (e.g. Domain\Username). This is also the most secure method because it cannot be overridden by the user like the other $Env variables below.
$Env:Username - Gets just the username.
$Env:UserDomain - Gets the user's domain.
$Env:ComputerName - Gets the name of the computer.
Any Shell
whoami - Gets the user's domain and username in the format "domain\username".
This also works on Unix systems as well, not just Windows, so it's a nice cross-platform solution.
%USERNAME% will get you the username of the currently running process. Depending on how you are running your batch file, this is not necessarily the same as the name of the current user. For example, you might be running your batch file through a scheduled task, from a service, etc.
Here is a more sure way of getting the username of the currently logged on user by scraping the name of the user that started the explorer.exe task:
for /f "TOKENS=1,2,*" %%a in ('tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq explorer.exe" /FO LIST /V') do if /i "%%a %%b"=="User Name:" set _currdomain_user=%%c
for /f "TOKENS=1,2 DELIMS=\" %%a in ("%_currdomain_user%") do set _currdomain=%%a & set _curruser=%%b
I use this method in writing batch files for testing.
echo %userdomain%\%username%
Since you must include the password in plain text if authentication is required, I will only use it in a completely private environment where other users cannot view it or if a user seeing the password would bear no consequences.
Hope this helps someone out.
In most cases, the %USERNAME% variable will be what you want.
echo %USERNAME%
However, if you're running an elevated cmd shell, then %USERNAME% will report the administrator name instead of your own user name. If you want to know the latter, run:
for /f "tokens=2" %u in ('query session ^| findstr /R "^>"') do #echo %u
It's always annoyed me how Windows doesn't have some of more useful little scripting utilities of Unix, such as who/whoami, sed and AWK. Anyway, if you want something foolproof, get Visual Studio Express and compile the following:
#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
printf("%s", GetUserName());
}
And just use that in your batch file.
Just type whoami in command prompt and you'll get the current username.
This is the main difference between username variable and whoami command:
C:\Users\user.name>echo %username%
user.name
C:\Users\user.name>whoami
domain\user.name
DOMAIN = bios name of the domain (not fqdn)
Via powershell (file.ps1)
I use the following
$username = [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent().Name
It returns the name of the user in the "Domain\Username" format.
If you just want the username just write
$username = [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent().Name.Split("\")[1]
The advantage is that It works with windows 10 windows 8 server 2016. As far as I remember with also other OS like Win7 etc. (not older)
. And yeah via batch you can simply use
$username = &whoami
In a standard context, each connected user holds an explorer.exe process: The command [tasklist /V|find "explorer"] returns a line that contains the explorer.exe process owner's, with an adapted regex it is possible to obtain the required value. This also runs perfectly under Windows 7.
In rare cases explorer.exe is replaced by another program, the find filter can be adapted to match this case. If the command return an empty line then it is likely that no user is logged on. With Windows 7 it is also possible to run [query session|find ">"].
As far as find BlueBearr response the best (while I,m running my batch script with eg. SYSTEM rights) I have to add something to it.
Because in my Windows language version (Polish) line that is to be catched by "%%a %%b"=="User Name:" gets REALLY COMPLICATED (it contains some diacritic characters in my language) I skip first 7 lines and operate on the 8th.
#for /f "SKIP= 7 TOKENS=3,4 DELIMS=\ " %%G in ('tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq explorer.exe" /FO LIST /V') do #IF %%G==%COMPUTERNAME% set _currdomain_user=%%H