Trilight Zone

[digital8]

Update: Version 6.2 was released in October 2004.

Windows Admin Script Tools is a set of utilities to assist Windows system administrators. While most of these tools don't provide script-shattering features, they simplify otherwise difficult tasks. The functionality of OSVER (returns operating system version information), for instance, is unmatched!

I have found many of these tools invaluable in my scripting and highly recommend you add them to your toolbox!



FVER Checks a Win32 .exe or .dll file's version. It can return an ERRORLEVEL code to a batch file. This is useful for checking for components on a machine (e.g. you can check to see if the WMI core is installed).


ISADMIN Determines if the currently logged-on user is an administrator. This could be useful if you are deploying software updates in a logon script.


ISMEMBER Determines if the currently logged-on user is a member of one or more groups (requires Windows NT 4.0 or later).


MINWIN Minimizes the current window. Handy for a logon script on Windows 9x/Me.


NUPP Stores a drive mapping, maps a UNC path to that drive letter temporarily, and then restores the previous mapping. This can be useful to map a temporary drive letter in a logon script.


OSVER Returns operating system version information to a batch file using an ERRORLEVEL. It can detect Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4, 2000, XP, and Server 2003. You can also check the service pack level or whether the machine is a workstation or server (NT 4.0 and later only).


OSVERX Provides more fine-grained OS checking than osver.exe (e.g.distinguish between XP Home and XP Pro). OSVERX works with Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6 and newer operating systems.


RASCONNS Returns an ERRORLEVEL value for the number of RAS connections currently active. A logon script can use this to determine if the logon is occurring over a dial-up connection. This utility is functionally identical to the CHECKRAS program from Microsoft's BackOffice Resource Kit.


WINMSG Displays a system-modal error message dialog box. This can be useful to generate a show-stopper error message in a batch file.