Archive for the ‘Batch-Files’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/07/21
This started out ad a post to make things easier for my mentally brother, but then I figured it makes it so much easier for myself as well: getting rid of the evern returning Windows nag screens. Not just the ones after logon during initial Windows install that get back about every other Windows 20H update (thank god they stepped away from 19## version numbering that felt so, ehm, last millennium), but also the various “suggestions” in start menu, on the taskbar and elsewhere.
I understand that basically giving Windows 10 and 11 for free to many Windows 7/8 licensed machines or Windows-preinstalled machines induces Microsoft to see Windows as an advertising environment, but hey: many users can do without these distractions.
It is hard to solve, as even the underlying registry settings seem to be reset every once in a while, and solving it globally is not an option: the settings are a per-user one. Which means you need to run script early during every Windows logon to overwrite these settings.
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Posted in Batch-Files, CommandLine, Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, Event, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Registry Files, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows Development | Tagged: 48 | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/29
Now that Python 2 has been dead for long enough (has it been unsupported for 5 years? yes it has: [Wayback/Archive] Status of Python Versions), it was finally time to change my alias for running a local web-server to serve files from a directory (:
So, from [Wayback/Archive] What is the Python 3 equivalent of “python -m SimpleHTTPServer” – Stack Overflow (thanks [Wayback/Archive] ryanbraganza, [Wayback/Archive] k.avinash and [Wayback/Archive] Petr Viktorin):
python -m http.server 8000, it will start the server on port 8000
Docs with the migration hints: [Wayback/Archive] 20.19. SimpleHTTPServer — Simple HTTP request handler — Python 2.7.18 documentation
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, bash, Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/02
Quite a while ago, Chrome moved from a structure based on “Current Session“, “Current Tabs“, “Last Session” and “Last Tabs” into “Session_#################” and “Tabs_#################” stored in a “Sessions” folder (and similar migrations for other state and configuration files).
The numbers in the “Session_*” and “Tabs_*” files are time stamps of those sessions, for instance one needs to figure out what the “13310808970819630” in “Session_13310808970819630” and “Session_13310808970819630” means.
Lot’s of web-pages with tips and tricks around the old structures are still around, often surfacing high in Google Search results.
I was interested in a particular trick to export Google Chrome browsing history and had a hard time figuring out the easiest solution.
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Posted in Apple, Batch-Files, Chrome, Chrome, Database Development, Development, Google, JavaScript/ECMAScript, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, NirSoft, Polyglot, Power User, Scripting, SQLite, Web Browsers, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11 | Tagged: define | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/23
A while ago, I needed to investigate reboot events on some Windows 10 systems. I wanted to use the console instead of the eventvwr GUI Event Viewer.
There is a tool for that called wevtutil which – like eventvwr – uses XPath query parameters and produces XML output.
Postprocessing XML can be a thing, but since .NET has great XML support, you can use PowerShell for that (which for me often is way easier than going the XSLT route, for instance because Windows lacks built-in console XSLT tooling).
Based on the help and the below links, my query command then on these machines turned out to be this: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Batch-Files, CommandLine, Development, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, XML, XML/XSD, XPath, XSLT | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/08
Directly after a new Windows installation, I want to have my cloned git repository of batch files in the PATH persistently so that it gets searched after rebooting or opening a new console window.
At that moment, there is not much of a 1024 PATH character limitation, but be aware about that limit if you try this yourself.
This is my add-current-directory-to-path-at-end.persistent-and-limit-to-1024-characters.bat:
:: https://serverfault.com/questions/664180/can-i-permanently-add-to-path-in-windows-using-batch
:: https://superuser.com/questions/812754/how-to-recover-from-path-being-truncated-to-1024-characters-by-setx
:: global environment
setx PATH "%PATH%;%CD%"
:: local process
:: https://superuser.com/questions/975605/add-current-directory-to-path
set PATH=%PATH%;%CD%
I execute it from within the cloned git directory.
Oh: you need to double-quote the SETX parameters, otherwise you get an error message: “ERROR: Invalid syntax. Default option is not allowed more than '2' time(s).“.
More links than the above ones from the batch file, especially on the 1024 character limitation:
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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/08
(All below statements were run elevated as Administrator)
I had arp -d fail with any parameter combination on one of my systems always throwing the error The ARP entry deletion failed: The parameter is incorrect..
Luckily I found out that this did clear the ARP cache correctly:
netsh interface ip delete arpcache
I found that via [Wayback/Archive] “The ARP entry deletion failed: The parameter is incorrect.” – Recherche Google:
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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/10
A very interesting read, where it keeps me wondering how batch files like these are being generated (making them by hand feels very surreal): [Wayback/Archive] From Highly Obfuscated Batch File to XWorm and Redline – SANS Internet Storm Center
VirusTotal entry: [Wayback/Archive] VirusTotal – File – 453c017e02e6ce747d605081ad78bf210b3d0004a056d1f65dd1f21c9bf13a9a
The day after the article was written, only Kaspersky and ZoneAlarm detected it; in the past ZoneAlarm used the Kaspersky engine, but that stopped a while ago: [Wayback/Archive] ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus Review | PCMag.
The malware uses at least these technologies:
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Posted in Antivirus, Batch-Files, Development, Power User, PowerShell, Python, Scripting, Security, Software Development, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/10/09
Note that the below methods likely will cause security warnings if a Windows machine has been properly configured, but in most cases at least one of them works.
- using cURL (Widows 10 and up)
curl --url https://speed.hetzner.de/100MB.bin --output %TEMP%\100MB.bin
- using [Wayback/Archive]
certutil | Microsoft Docs (at least Windows 7 and up; needs UAC elevation)
certutil.exe -urlcache -split -f https://speed.hetzner.de/100MB.bin %TEMP%\100MB.bin
- using PowerShell (at least Windows Vista and up)
powershell.exe -Command (New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile('https://speed.hetzner.de/100MB.bin','%TEMP%\100MB.bin')
I think it works for all versions of curl, certutil, and PowerShell though I did not have anything older than up-to-date Windows 7 (having PowerShell version 3) and recent to test on.
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Posted in *nix, *nix-tools, .NET, Batch-Files, CommandLine, cURL, Development, Power User, PowerShell, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Development, Windows Vista | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/09/05
Shadow IT has entered the chat
Many companies have hardly any idea how many scripts are being used by their people to get the chores of day to day work done.
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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, PowerShell, Python, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2024/07/25
A few years ago I asked for some help figuring out what to whitelist so that winget can update its sources and install packages.
This is how I found out.
The queste started with [Wayback/Archive] Need help trying to figure out what domains/IPs to whitelist for installing packages · Discussion #2304 · microsoft/winget-cli
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Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Firewall, Fritz!, Fritz!Box, Hardware, Network-and-equipment, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 11, winget | Leave a Comment »
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 