Just upgraded recently from WindowsXP to Windows7. One feature I used a lot forever (since Win95 I think), was the search as you type (this is what I call it anyways). It’s when you have an Explorer window open (let’s say in this case c:\ ) and you type “W” – it moves the cursor to directory that starts with the letter “W.” You can type “Win” quickly and it will go to the first directory that starts with those keywords in case you have directories that start with “Win.”

So after I configured the UI settings on Win7 to the way I saw fit, I realized that this feature was gone. It would automatically start searching for text in all files recursively – very annoying. I asked how to turn this feature off in many forums and do what I wanted to do and no one knew.

I finally figured it out. It was a setting that I turned on accidentally. (D’oh!)

Explorer Window -> Organize -> Folder Options -> View Tab -> When typing
into list view -> Select the typed item in the view

That wasn’t checked. I suppose I did it instinctively without thinking. In WindowsXP, the area is used to trigger Advanced File Sharing, and I guess I didn’t realize this in Windows7. Also, I don’t think in XP this is an option you can control because it just works.

Windows7 Options

WindowsXP Options

I’m assuming you’ve seen what Chrome OS can do. Just Google “Chrome OS,” because it’s everywhere.

I would give Chrome OS an 8.0 / 10.0 for computer beginners, like the grandmas of the world. It’s gets a 2.0 / 10.0 for techies. Why? Three reasons.

• Needs too many resources for what it delivers.
• Cannot run executables, not even virtually/sandboxed.
• Needs the cloud for storage.

Kind of annoying that I can’t just run it on any old laptop / netbook. System requirements are too demanding for what it promises and it seems it’s needed just to have that 2-4 second boot-up time, which honestly it doesn’t mean much to me. There’s never a time where I’m in such a hurry that I need my computer that fast, because I’m either doing something else, or I just use my phone.

I some people really care about boot-up time? I’d rather wait 10 more seconds and have the ability to run .EXE files and have it run on old PC’s. For a minimalist device, I have my table PC or iPhone already that can do all that stuff, and I don’t have to worry about malware on the iPhone. I don’t think techies have to worry to much about malware since they’re careful about getting them in the first place and have good Anti-viruses.

Lastly, an Internet connection is not ubiquitous yet. I’m on the subway a lot where there’s no WIFI and sometimes I travel to places without an Internet connection. I want to be able to at least read my latest documents without connecting to the cloud.

The OS is still in the works, so I suppose maybe they’ll address some of these features in the future.

You know what, I tried PowerShell and I guess I never got used to it. I’ve been using DOS for the longest time that I prefer its simplicity when navigating through files. As far as scripting with it – forget it – it’s very cryptic and limiting, not to mention awkward. That’s why for scripting now I’m using Python. Nonetheless though, I sometimes need a playing field to run the scripts for, or running console utilities. That’s where Console2 comes in.

Console2 is a great tool that provides tabbing (you can tab through multiple consoles) and several ways to customize the UI. Here’s an example:

I prefer this configuration:

How I Have It Setup

Download Console2:

• 32-bit Version
• 64-bit Version

I have the Console2 open up when I hit CTR+\ via AutoHotkey. Here’s the snippet for this to happen in AutoHotkey. I have this run when Window starts (it must stay in memory).

^\::Run C:\dan-local\dos-win\Console.exe

Change the CMD prompt by creating a PROMPT system variable:




Download the Console2 Config File

Other Tips

Autocomplete
Good tip about command console = CTRL+I
can select files in the current directory, kinda like autofill-in
you can also put in parts of the file and it autoputs it for you

Rename tab
CTRL+R

New Tab with default transparency
CTRL+F1

New Tab with lighter transparency
CTRL+F2

Switch to NEXT adjacent tab
CTRL+TAB

Switch to Previous adjacent tab
CTRL+SHIFT+TAB

CTRL+[NUMBER]
Goes to the tab instance. To make it easier, it’s best if you rename your tabs,

[INSTANCE NAME].[NAME OF TAB]

So for example,

1.Batch File
2.wget list
3.ftp the files

It’s interesting how the <base> works in various clients. I thought all major web clients would support it, but apparently it is not the case.

Let’s look at how some email clients process this tag:

Yahoo.com! Web Mail

Base tags are modified by their mail server and relative URLs are changed to absolute. So it works.

Gmail Web Mail

Base tags are modified by their mail server and relative URLs are changed to absolute. So it works.

Gmail Account via Thunderbird

Base tags are shown and its functionality is intact. URLs remain relative. So it works.

iMS Account via Outlook 2007

Base tags are shown and its functionality is intact. URLs remain relative. So it works. More info on iMS.

ShinyLight Account via iPhone

Can’t see the HTML, but all URLs worked.

Hotmail

Unfortunately, this is the ugly duckling. Hotmail servers remove the base tag and leave your relative links as relative. Big FAIL.

In my last post, I made a quick script that checks for the date. It was very limiting, since it used the dir command. This one uses several date/time Python modules and is more capable.

import os, os.path, stat, time
from datetime import date, timedelta, datetime
 
# Reference
# http://docs.python.org/library/datetime.html
# http://docs.python.org/library/time.html
 
def getFileDate( filenamePath ):    
 
  used = os.stat( filenamePath ).st_mtime      
  year, day, month, hour, minute, second = time.localtime(used)[:6]
  objDateTime = datetime(year, day, month, hour, minute, second)
 
  return objDateTime
 
  # Ways to reference this DateTime Object
  # objDateTime.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %I:%M %p")
  # objDateTime.year
  # objDateTime.month
 
 
def isDaysOldFromNow( filenamepath, days ):
 
  # Checks how old a file is. Is it older than "days" [variable] days?
  inTimeRange = False  
  timeDeltaDiff = ( datetime.now()-getFileDate( filenamepath ) ).days
 
  # Check if the file's date is days old or less:
  if ( timeDeltaDiff >= days ):
    inTimeRange = True  
 
  return inTimeRange
 
fname = "C:/temp/decision2.pdf"  
 
# Set this variable to check if the file is this days old
howOld = 3
 
 
if ( isDaysOldFromNow( fname, howOld ) ):
  print fname, "is more than", howOld, "days old"
else:
  print fname, "is NOT more than", howOld, "days old"

Output:

Sometimes log files bog a system down. For one of our servers, I made this little Python script that compresses (via WinRAR) the log files in a directory, and then moves them to a backup location. The only little catch is that I wanted to leave the latest log files for in that directory. Log files are created daily, so the the latest log files have a datestamp of today. Here’s how I did it.

First Create the Python Script:

import os
import datetime
 
dateStamp  = datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%Y-%m-%d") 
imsLogPath = 'd:\\LogFiles\\'                     
# Don't use a mapped drive but use UNC for network drives. Task Schedule seems to choke when it calls Python.
newRARPath = '"\\\\192.168.1.2\\Root\\backups\\' + dateStamp + '.rar"'
rarPath    = '"C:\\Program Files\\WinRAR\\rar.exe" a -m5 ' + newRARPath 
 
# Get Latest Files
smtpLatest   = os.popen(r"dir /od /a-d /b " + imsLogPath + "SMTP*.log").read().splitlines()[-1]
postLatest   = os.popen(r"dir /od /a-d /b " + imsLogPath + "POST*.log").read().splitlines()[-1]
ischedLatest = os.popen(r"dir /od /a-d /b " + imsLogPath + "iSched*.log").read().splitlines()[-1]
relayLatest  = os.popen(r"dir /od /a-d /b " + imsLogPath + "Relay*.log").read().splitlines()[-1]
qengLatest   = os.popen(r"dir /od /a-d /b " + imsLogPath + "Qeng*.log").read().splitlines()[-1]
 
# Get List of All Files
allFiles     = os.popen(r"dir /od /a-d /b " + imsLogPath + "*.log").read().splitlines()
 
# Remove Latest Files from All Files List
allFiles.remove( smtpLatest )
allFiles.remove( postLatest )
allFiles.remove( ischedLatest )
allFiles.remove( relayLatest )
allFiles.remove( qengLatest )
 
# allFiles Array Has the list of files
 
# Flatten Array allFiles to be used as a parameter in system command
flatLogPathList = ""
for filenameWithPath in allFiles:
  flatLogPathList = flatLogPathList + imsLogPath + filenameWithPath + " "
 
 
# Execute WinRar
path = rarPath + " " + flatLogPathList.rstrip()
os.system( '"' + path + '"' )
 
# Delete all log files
os.system( '"del ' + flatLogPathList.rstrip() + '"' )

Then I set up the Scheduled Task:

With these Settings:

I often use both Winamp and my iPhone to listen to music. These two, unfortunately, show the time differently in the songs. Winamp displays the time in minutes (mm) while the iPhone does it hour/minutes (hh:mm). Here’s a quick little script I whipped together because I’m too lazy to do this in my head, especially for audio books where an audio book can be over 500 minutes, and I need to convert to iPhone time because I want to continue listening where I had just left off on Winamp.

use POSIX qw(ceil floor); # used for the floor function
 
sub GetToken {
  # @_ = flatten args list from an array
  # @_[0] = first argument
 
  $data      = @_[0];
  $delimiter = @_[1];
  $token     = @_[2] - 1;
 
  @tokens_array = split($delimiter, $data);   
 
  return @tokens_array[$token]; 
}
 
sub chr_conver_min {  
  if (length(@_[0]) == 1) {
    return "0".@_[0];
  }
  else {
    return @_[0];
  }   
}
 
 
sub iphone_time_convert {
 
  # converts winamp time to iphone - winamp stores time only in minutes.  
  # @_[0]   =  winamp_time, e.g. 124:34
  # $hour   = floor($winamp_time/60);
  # $minute = $winamp_time % 60;
 
  $winamp_hour_min = GetToken(@_[0], ":", 1);  
  $winamp_seconds  = GetToken(@_[0], ":", 2);  
 
  return floor($winamp_hour_min/60).":".chr_conver_min( ($winamp_hour_min % 60) ).":".$winamp_seconds;
 
}
 
 
sub winamp_time_convert {  
 
  # converts iphone time to winamp  
  # @_[0] = iphone_time, e.g. 3:43:34    
  $iphone_hour     = GetToken(@_[0], ":", 1);  
  $iphone_min      = GetToken(@_[0], ":", 2);    
  $iphone_seconds  = GetToken(@_[0], ":", 3);
 
  return (($iphone_hour * 60) + $iphone_min).":".$iphone_seconds;
 
}
 
sub show_help {
  print "\nDisplays the conversion of time between winamp and iPhone.\n\n";
  print "   winamptime [-w2i|-i2p] [mm:ss][hh:mm:ss]\n\n";
  print "Example to convert winamp time to iPhone: \n\n";
  print "   winamptime -w2i 212:41\n\n";
  print "Example to convert iPhone time to winamp, seconds being optional: \n\n";
  print "   winamptime -i2w 2:31:41\n";
  print "   winamptime -i2w 2:31\n\n";
}
 
 
# START
 
# Optimize this:
if( $ARGV[0] eq "-w2i" ) 
{
  # winamp to iphone time
  if ( length($ARGV[1]) > 0 ) {
    print "iPhone Time: ".iphone_time_convert( $ARGV[1] )."\n";
  }
}
elsif( $ARGV[0] eq "-i2w" ) 
{
  # iphone to winamp time
  if ( length($ARGV[1]) > 0 ) {
    print "Winamp Time: ".winamp_time_convert( $ARGV[1] )."\n";
  }
}
else 
{
  show_help();
}

Output:

Recently I’ve had to install SQL Server 2008 on a few machines. Some of these errors made absolutely no sense, but I found solutions that worked for me. Maybe they’ll help you.

Windows 2000 Server (32-bit)

“The procedure entry point GetConsoleProcessList could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll.”

That sounds pretty self-explanatory, right? Actually, this was the easiest error to make sense of. This is the error you get because SQL Server 2008 is not compatible with Windows 2000 Server. It comes from the fact that SQL Server 2008 needs .NET 3.5+, and that version of .NET is not Windows 2000-compatible.

Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server (32-bit)

Surprisingly, I received no errors while trying to install it on Windows XP. Everything went fine with Windows 2003 Server.

Windows 7 (64-bit)

OK, this was hell on earth. First I ran the setup, and mid-way through the installation, I received this gem:

“SQL Server Setup has encountered the following error:

Invoke or BeginInvoke cannot be called on a control until the window handle has been created..”

I noticed that this arises if you have the focus on another Window while the installer is running. I was browsing the web via Firefox and I received this. To make sure you don’t get this, don’t have any other Window running and only have the focus on the installer.

That wasn’t the only error I received. When I initially ran the setup, I saw a console window flash and then nothing would happen. (I waited for a few minutes and nothing. Setup.exe wasn’t even in the task manager.) When you run setup.exe, it fires landingpage.exe, which is the actual wizard installer. Unfortunately, it wasn’t running it. I even made sure I had the requirements, and nothing. I rebooted several times, and finally decided to run landingpage.exe directly. When I ran it, it finally saw the wizard. I was joyful, until it got to this part:

What the heck?! Where are the features?

Why would the wizard make it this far and then then not have the features to let me install? This was useless. If you’re curious, it should’ve looked like this:

Then for the heck of it, I decided to Install SQL Server 2008 SP1, without even installing SQL Server 2008 first. Don’t know why, but it let me install it anyways. Then when I ran the SQL Server 2008 installer again, but this time, I would see these features:

Ugh, still no luck. Finally, the only thing that I could conclude was that I may have a bad installation. So I restored my machine to an earlier restore point (to undo this installation mess) and re-downloaded the installation files.

Voila! No more problems. So that’s what it was. I was finally able to see all the features to install. So maybe the files got corrupted upon download or it was an incomplete download.

Recently, I needed to do some work from the Windows Command Line, and I needed to deal with a few images. Along the way, I found some great tools. All these tools are free. Can come in useful when automating.

Manipulation

ImageMagick – This is a collection of command line tools. You can do image conversion, view properties, transform, transparency, join, overlay, add special special effects, and tons more. Also has APIs for C, C++, Java, .NET, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and others. Highly recommend it.

Screen Capture

CmdCapture – Takes a screenshot of your desktop from the command line.

IECapt – Capture Internet Explorer’s rendering of a web page into a BMP, JPEG or PNG image file.

Cutycapt – Capture WebKit’s rendering of a web page into a variety of vector and bitmap formats, including SVG, PDF, PS, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, and BMP.

wkhtmltopdf – Convert HTML to PDF using the Webkit rendering engine, and Qt.

If you want to unlock files in Windows many of us know to use Unlocker. It’s a handy tool that I use often when a pesky process has a handle on a file. But what if you want to write a script that unlocks files from the command line. Welcome the tool “Handle” from Sysinternals by Mark Russinovich.

Then you could loop through the list of files by doing so.