Archived News from Rob van der Woude's Scripting Pages, 2021

• I added information to my Tweaks page on how to Stop nagging about Microsoft accounts and services in Windows 10.
The information comes from

Sean Endicott on WindowsCentral.com: Windows 10 showing prompt to sign up for Microsoft services? Here's how to stop it.
Geek-Pride on Microsoft's Community forums: Disable Microsoft Account Nagging

Thanks Sean and Geek-Pride

• CheckPath.exe is a new console program to check the PATH variable(s) for empty or non-existing entries.
It will show all directories in the PATH in green if they exist, otherwise in red, and it will show empty entries as "<empty>".
If any errors are found, the program prompts you to open the System Properties settings windows' Advanced tab, allowing you to edit Environment Variables.

• Several new PowerShell Snippets were added (112 total and still counting).

• As an experiment, to practice working with classes in PowerShell, I created PowerShell Computer Class.
It can be used to hold "all" available hardware information for the local computer, info that can be viewed in a general overview, or in detail.
See the help text, displayed after running the command [Computer]::Help, or the PowerShell Computer Class product page for more details.

• Show-Console.ps1 is a new cmdlet to manipulate the console window state, i.e. minimize it, hide it, etc.
Most of its code was found in an answer by Hansson0728 on StackOverflow.com, I added more parameter handling and help (try Get-Help Show-Console).
You may want to add this function to your PowerShell profile.

Thanks Hansson0728

• HTMLEntities.exe is a new GUI tool to convert between Unicode characters, HTML entities and URL encoded characters.

• GetSystemInformation.exe is a new helper tool to list selected or all properties and values of .NET's System.Windows.Forms.SystemInformation class.

• Several new and updated items on the PowerShell Snippets page... including a way to check if mouse buttons are swapped without P/Invoke.

• The PowerShell Snippets page has been updated again: you can now use filters and highlights to find code snippets by category.

• Several new PowerShell Snippets were added.

• The RUNDLL32 page has been updated again: you can now use filters and highlights to find commands by category.

• Francesco corrected an error in the PowerShell command line in the "Find RUNDLL32 commands yourself" section: the ForEach-Object now uses the proper curly braces.
While at it, I also included the "pure" PowerShell commands, for PowerShell 5 as well as 7.

Thanks Francesco

• I added a PowerShell snippet to get the path of the current wallpaper, found at GitHub Gist.

• Site Search works again, with a little help from my friends... 🤓

Thanks

• I added a new PowerShell Snippet using USER32.DLL' GetSystemMetrics method to check if the mouse buttons are swapped.
The code is based on sample code by Frode F. on StackOverflow.com.

Thanks Frode

• I updated my login scripts page.

• I updated and restyled my RUNDLL32 page.

• I added new PowerShell Snippets to check for elevation.

• I restored the Site Search link in the menu: though I cannot confirm it myself, it seems to work for some visitors.
Work in progress...

• I added PowerShell code snippets to my login scripts page.

• I removed the Site Search link from the menu because Startpage.com no longer supports it.

• I added new PowerShell and C# snippets to open Windows settings using Windows 10's ms-settings URI scheme.

• Another minor update for Hardware.hta: when running without elevated privileges, the HTA will use Internet Explorer, ignoring the /NOIE setting.

• A minor update for Hardware.hta: when you right-click a field its content will be selected, allowing faster copy and paste of individual fields.

• A bug-fix for Edit.bat: it will now work correctly in Windows 10.

• Up till now, Mause.exe (Mouse enabled pAUSE) would read keys froms the keyboard buffer, unlike the real PAUSE command.
This behaviour has now been corrected, the updated version of Mause.exe flushes the keyboard buffer when it is started, and then waits for keyboard or mouse input.
To make it accept keys from the keyboard buffer again, use the optional /N switch.
The code to flush the keyboard buffer was provided by gandjustas on StackOverflow.com.

Thanks gandjustas

• A bug in CaptureDate.exe has been fixed: it should now handle relative paths correctly.

• ScrollLockIcon.exe has been released.
It was derived from CapsLockIcon.exe but uses a slightly different approach to read the ScrolLock status: System.Windows.Forms' Control.IsKeyLocked( Keys.Scroll ) vs System's Console.CapsLock.

• A new optional timeout feature has been added to Mause.exe.

• Mause.exe is a Mouse enabled pAUSE command: use it like the ordinary PAUSE command, allowing the user to either press any key or click with the mouse or move the mouse wheel.
This program relies heavily on the ConsoleListener class by SWdV.

Thanks SWdV

• Like CapsLockIcon.exe, NumLockIcon.exe also has a new feature: hide when OFF.
It will optionally show the NumLock icon in the Notification Area only when NumLock is ON.

• CapsLockIcon.exe has a new feature: hide when OFF.
It will optionally show the CapsLock icon in the Notification Area only when CapsLock is ON.

• A bug in InputBox.exe has been fixed: the input field now gets focus when the dialog is loaded.
Previos attempts to accomplish this had failed, setting the input field's TabIndex property to 0 did the trick.

• BatCodeCheck has been updated:

The color DarkYellow, chosen for comments in highlighted text, does not exist in CSS and hence would be ignored in HTML output; this has been reported and fixed by Alfons van Zwol
Calls to external commands would generate false positives if %~dpn0 like constructions were used; this was also reported by Alfons van Zwol; the current version handles these constructions correctly, but "ordinary" variables (e.g. %ProgramFiles%) still lead to false positives, which is next on the ToDo list

Thanks Alfons

• A bugfix for Hardware.hta: it should now properly restore its window a couple of seconds after startup.

• Often, these days, computer related support has to be done remotely.
Due to travel restrictions and overcrowded parks in Amsterdam, a friend of mine who is not quite computer-savvy, to put it mildly, spends most of her weekends photographing and filming birds on the balcony of her appartment.
Some of her bird videos turned out to be rotated, however, and we spent many hours before we found out how to use VLC Media Player to rotate and save the video... certainly not for the faint-of-heart!
Being convinced there must be an easier way, preferably command line, I went on searching until I stumbled upon a solution using FFMPEG instead of VLC to rotate (and save) videos.
Rather than trying to make my computer-illiterate friend type the correct commands, I wrote a simple HTA wrapper: RotateVideo.hta.

Since these videos are to be uploaded to various social media sites, I anticipated having to resize the videos as well, so I also wrote ResizeVideo.hta as a wrapper for the required FFMPEG commands, which I found in this helpful article by Akshay Rajeev.

Thanks Alexy and Akshay

News Archives 2021