Showing archive results for 2005

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a fixed-width text file which includes first name (6 characters), last name (13 characters), and department (9 characters) all on a single line. How do I read that using ADO?-- DW Hey, DW. Well, to be perfectly honest, we don’t think you can read a file like this using ADO (ActiveX Data Objects). ADO is a fantastic way...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I tell if ActiveX is enabled in Internet Explorer?-- JV Hey, JV. You just had to ask this question, didn’t you? Actually, this isn’t a particularly hard question to answer, it’s just a little complicated. But that has to do more with the way Internet Explorer is configured than it does with writing a script to retriev...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I get the command window to stay open after running a tool like Ping or Ipconfig?-- DB Hey, DB. Now this question takes us back. Back when one of the Scripting Guys first started here at Microsoft many people thought WMI and ADSI were way too hard for script writers to use. As a result, this Scripting Guy was discoura...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I receive notification any time something is printed to a particular printer?-- IL Hey, IL. You know, one of the Scripting Guys once had a summer job in an organization where the only decent printer in the entire building was kept in the administrative assistant’s office. We can attest, from painful experience, that i...

Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I clear an HTA window?-- DF Hey, DF. Well, to tell you the truth, if you’d ever seen at least one of the Scripting Houses you wouldn’t be asking us if we knew how to clear a window; it’s pretty obviously some of us don’t. (In our defense, though, if we keep the window clean then birds have a terrible habit of flying h...