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

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

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:

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.

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.

Needed to backup my contacts in Outlook, but it would not save the emails in the email “To” dropdown field, when autocomplete triggers. This is because it’s stored in Outlook’s NK2 cache file. This file is not in readable form, but you if you have the patience, you can view the emails if you don’t mind looking through funky ASCII characters of binary data. In the process of looking for and trying various tools, I realized that not all tools were able to extract all contacts. Keep this in mind.

There’s a few tools out there that you can use to extract a list of emails saved in the NK2 file. Here they are.

Ingressor – is the best program, I was able to extract the most amount of emails/contacts, but you have to pay for it. I think it extracts everything, but you can’t save anything or copy anything. Use OCR software?

Debunk2– It’s free, but it missed 1 (could possibly miss more on different NK2 files) contact.

NK2.info– It’s free, but it missed 2 contacts, and it doesn’t show the names accurately, like Debung2 and Ingressor.

I thought this might be useful for those who are constantly uploading the same files. Whether you need to deploy a project live or constantly upload the same group of files, you can do this by creating a batch file in Windows using ftp.exe.

First of all, if you’re not familiar with FTP.exe, it’s just a command console way to upload/download files from an FTP server. You can run this program and start typing away…. OR, you can load a text file filled with FTP commands in FTP.exe. For example, the following are commands in a file called upload.bs:

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open western.dreamhost.com
username
password
binary
hash
send index.htm
send frame.htm
send car.jpg
bye

The above should be straightforward. The “open” command is used to connect to the FTP server. The “username” should be your usename and “password” should be your actual password. “binary” is how your data should be handled on transfer – if it’s not text, it’s binary data, and should be “binary.” “hash” makes the console display pound signs (#) to serve as a progress bar as it’s uploading to the server. The “send” commands are used to upload the files. “bye” is exits the FTP session.

That was just a FTP script session file. You now need to call that file from FTP.exe on WindowsXP. You do that as follows:

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@%windir%\system32\ftp.exe -s:upload.bs

You can include that call in a file called “upload.bat” – To learn more about FTP scripting and how to merge the two files into just one batch file, you can check out this site. Also, there’s more information about this found here: tinyapps.org.

Ever had such an annoying message given by Windows?

It has many other flavors:

Cannot delete file: Access is denied
There has been a sharing violation.
The source or destination file may be in use.
The file is in use by another program or user.
Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

Now you have an option to unlock it using Unlocker. Now, sometimes it’s theoretically impossible to unlock all files, especially some DLLs that are burned into Windows, but for most applications that you run that are not part of Windows, you either have the choice of unlock, rename, and move. This program is free too and it tries to do it without actually killing processes.

Here are some reviews for Unlocker.

Got a small file you want to scan for virus? Here’s a few that I use for that quick scan.

http://virusscan.jotti.org/

http://www.virscan.org/

http://www.virustotal.com/

http://scanner.virus.org/

http://www.kaspersky.com/scanforvirus

Want to run a script in the command console that is not of type EXE, COM, BAT by just typing in the name of the script? Have a script in Perl or Python that you have that you want to run without typing the name of the interpreter with switches? It's pretty easy to do in Windows.

1. Open up System Properties and click on Environment Variables:
   
   
   
   
2. Select the PATHEXT System variable and click on the Edit button.
   
   
   
   
3. Add the extension you want. In this case, let's add the extension for .PL so we can run Perl scripts without typing in the name of the Perl interpreter:
   
   
   
   
4. Hit OK on the Windows.
   
   
5. In an Explorer Window, Go to Tools -> Folders
   
   
   
   
6. In the Folder Options Window, click on the File Types tab, and then click New:
   
   
   
   
7. Type .PL for the File Extension
   
   
   
   
8. Click OK then Click on the Advanced button to open up the Edit File Type and click on New...
   
   
   
   
9. Enter the name of the interpreter:
   
   
   
   
10. Hit OK for all Windows.
    
    
11. You're set and good to go.

Now let's test it. Make a .pl file under c:\ called "add.pl". Make add.pl be:

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$sum = $ARGV[0] + $ARGV[1];
print "\nSum of the numbers is: $sum\n\n";

Now let’s call it via the console by typing:

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add 5 5