Some of the programs that we use in Windows, have a system menu containing an option – Always on top.  If selected, this feature sets a window to be always on top of other windows. This is very useful if you want to work across multiple windows but want to focus more of your attention on a particular window. You can set that window to be always on top and keep an eye on it. I personally use this feature to set my TV Tuner window to be always on top so that I can enjoy TV programs while doing work at the same time.

Unfortunately this Always on Top option is not available in many programs. Possibly because the software designer never thought that users will ever need such a feature. However, if you want to keep a program always on top, you can use the Always On Top application. After downloading and installing this program, you can start it from the shortcut it creates. Now you can drag the hand like icon over a window the you want to make always on top. Later, you can toggle the always on top status of that window on and off using the hotkey Ctrl + F8.

This software works very well for the situations when you have to read data from one application and type it into another, for example, password managers. You can set the first password manager window to be always on top and easily read the information and type it into your login window.

Download Window On Top

Download Window On Top

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PROS: Tuneup Utilities 2012 is built upon years of tweaking and re-tweaking to get the most out Windows with all types of hardware. The Program Deactivator removes overhead from your system by temporarily disabling applications (and their associated processes and services) while you enjoy the benefit of more system resources–for your important tasks. Economy Mode saves battery while you’re on the go. CONS: An upgrade is required each year to get the latest features (like Economy Mode in 2012 and the Program Deactivator in 2011.) VERDICT: If TuneUp released a product for cars, mechanics would go out of business. TuneUp Utilities makes PC maintenance easy–very easy. I recommend this program for users who are not comfortable tweaking and maintaining their PC and would like an easy way to keep things in check and have a PC that runs without unnecessary interruption. PRICE: $29.95 (Upgrade) $34.95 (Full Version as of 11/13/2011) VERSION REVIEWED: TuneUp Utilities 2012 DOWNLOAD: TuneUp Utilities 2012 15-day Trial (aff)

TuneUp Utilities is a long-standing member of the PC tweaking programs club and they’ve continued to improve their product, at a steady pace, year after year. For 2012, they’ve introduced Economy Mode, which helps save battery life—keeping you connected for longer while you’re mobile. This is the only new major feature this year; however, the program has been updated with more tips and tricks, revisions to previous tweaks, and UI improvements to help you work your way around this powerful collection of tools.

If you’re new to TuneUp Utilities, you might enjoy this little overview; otherwise, skip to what’s new.

TuneUp Utilities Overview

TuneUp scans your PC’s settings, system files, registry, and more and, based upon what it finds, offers you tips to improve your PC’s performance. TuneUp can take care of everything for you with one click or can walk you through the process of speeding up your PC.

Download and install TuneUp Utilities 2012. I recommend you check the Custom Installation box on the first screen:

I like to check for updates myself and I don’t use desktop gadgets; here are my configuration choices:

When you first start using TuneUp, you are guided through the 1-Click Maintenance wizard. Before you go through the Wizard, I recommend you configure the Settings:

Once you’ve made your choices (or if you chose not to configure your settings yet), click Start analysis now:

TuneUp scans your PC and identifies:

• Registry problems
• Registry fragmentation
• Broken shortcuts
• Temporary files
• Startup optimizations
• Shutdown optimizations

Click Show details (where available) and view more details about the recommendations given:

Clicking Run maintenance will fix the errors and problems and get you on your way to a cleaner PC:

After running the automatic maintenance for the first time, you can “set it and forget it” and TuneUp will tweak your PC in the background:

You can manage TuneUp right from the system tray and get a quick overview of any potential problems that exist. You can also switch between Turbo, Standard, and Economy Modes.

Note: Some of the following screenshots come from the TuneUp Utilities 2011 review–the features in 2012 are the same.

By telling TuneUp your computing preferences (e.g. what level of visual effects you like) and information it may not be able to determine alone (e.g. Internet connection type and speeds), it can customize your computer for best performance according to your needs:

TuneUp will, at first, offer you many performance-enhancing changes and tools. Don’t worry, it wont take you long to get through all the suggestions, and you’ll be glad you did afterward. Here’s an example of TuneUp offering to scan your drive with the TuneUp Disk Doctor to check your hard drives for errors:

I decided to scan all hard drives:

Here’s another example where TuneUp identifies programs you haven’t used in a long time and asks you if you recognize them or not. If you don’t recognize the program, TuneUp will help you determine its purpose and help you disable it (more about that later) or uninstall it:

As with all good optimization programs, you can back out your changes at any time. The TuneUp Rescue Center can help you fix and problems that may be caused by over-zealous clean up.

Disable Programs; Verify their Usefulness by Rating

The Program Decactivator deactivates programs that you currently don’t use. By deactiviating a program, you stop the services and supporting programs that are run by it. If you need some of these programs occasionally, it could be tedious to uninstall and reinstall these programs again and again. The Program Deactivator is designed to “pause” a program until you need it again. I deactivated iTunes (which tends to slow down my PC), plugged in my iPhone, and TuneUp popped up to let me know iTunes had, in an instant, been reactivated for use again — easy!

Not sure which programs to deactivate? TuneUp comes with a user-driven rating system that lets you rate the programs you use and view the ratings left by others:

Aware of privacy concerns, I checked out What data will be transferred? and saw the following:

I also spoke to one of the founders of the company, Tibor Schiemann, and he verified that no personal or identifiable information is sent in this process and that your anonymity is high priority.

One feature that isn’t new but is very useful is TuneUp Shredder. Find out how to use it here: Permanently delete files with TuneUp Shredder.

That concludes the overview. Now, on to the new features in 2012.

TuneUp Utilities 2012 New Features

TuneUp Economy Mode

TuneUp Economy mode changes system settings, disables hardware, and helps your PC run more conservatively to help save battery life. If you’re someone who is on the go all the time, you know how much an extra 20 minutes of battery life can help when you’re, for example: stuck on a plane; finishing a report just before class; or cramming a revision session in outside the exam hall. Economy Mode can be accessed with just two clicks (click TuneUp in the system tray and click Economy Mode) and it will instantly start saving you power.

Test Results:

I tried TuneUp Economy Mode on my wife’s netbook:

Setup: New installation Windows 7 Ultimate w/SP1 and VLC Player. Battery fully charged.

Test: Play HD (720p) MKV on loop until battery drains

Standard Mode: 2 hours and 15 minutes

Windows Power saver mode: 2 hours and 23 minutes

Economy Mode: 2 hours and 53 minutes (a 28% improvement! over standard mode)

The results of this test are fairly significant; use of Economy Mode is a far better option than Windows “Power saver” mode or no power savings.

Optimization Status

New in TuneUp 2011 was the Tuning status bar; this year, it’s been improved to be a little more intuitive and help you understand what needs to be done to improve performance:

2011:

2012:

As you can, see there is more information on what steps you’ve taken to optimize and what is outstanding–unused potential.

TuneUp Utilities Settings

As each utility within TuneUp has it’s own configuration, you can quickly get lost in settings screens and even change the same settings twice or three times through different panels without realizing. This year, TuneUp Utilities comes with a unified settings console to help you configure each tool in a central location. While this isn’t really an exciting feature, it really does help you organize yourself a little more and take a more systematic approach to your optimizing.

Other notable changes include:

• Enhancements to the program deactivator; now the assistant reactivates programs for use and then automatically deactivates them again for you. Read more about the Program Deactivator in the overview above.
• A modified dashboard UI with integrated settings buttons for each utility as well as a switch for the three performance modes

Download TuneUp Utilities 2012

TuneUp Utilities 2012 15-day Trial (aff)

Here’s How

This Quick-Tip works in both Excel 2007 and 2010 (and perhaps in some older versions as well). The only differences between the two is the different Office Buttons. In Excel 2007 the Office button is a round Windows button, where as in 2010 it’s a green tab.

1. In Excel 2010, Click the Green FILE-tab
   In Excel 2007, Click the Round Office Button
2. In Excel 2010, Choose Options in the bottom part of the left panel.
   In Excel 2007, Choose Excel options in the lower right corner of the Office File Menu
3. Locate the following heading in the right pane:
   “When creating new workbooks”
4. Change the value under: “Include this many sheets” from 3 to your desired number
5. Click OK

That’s it, and that’s that.

1. Open registry editor (regedit.exe)
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE | Software | Microsoft | Windows NT | CurrentVersion | Winlogon
3. Under Winlogon, look for a key named: SpecialAccounts If it’s not there create a New key (in the left pane) with that name.
4. If The SpecialAccounts Key is present, inside there will be another key named: UserList (if not create it). If the UserList Key is present you may find several usernames listed, if the username you want to hide is there, skip to step 6.
5. In the Right Pane, create a new DWORD value, and use the account name that you want to hide.
6. Double click the new DWORD entry and set the value to 0 (zero) To unhide an account later on, set the value to 1 (one)

The next time you log on, the account will be hidden. To access the hidden accounts, press CTRL+ALT+DELETE at the welcome screen to open the “Log on to Windows” dialog box.

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4 out of 5	Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

PROS: Lightweight, does what it claims, can be very useful for Home Theater PC setups as well as multi-PC offices etc. CONS: Can be a little difficult to get working as you expect it to. Cannot link computers on different subnets or networks. VERDICT: If you find you don’t like InputDirector and want to give Synergy a try, I think you’ll find you really like it. PRICE: Free VERSION REVIEWED: 1.3.4 DOWNLOAD: Synergy

Synergy Features

Synergy’s function is, in essence, very simple: it allows you to control multiple PCs with the use of one keyboard and mouse. You need to install Synergy on each computer and then set one up as the “server” and the other PCs and the “clients”.

Synergy also lets you share the clipboard and screensaver between your computers.

Synergy doesn’t take much setup and once complete, is a breeze to use–I highly recommend it.

How to Use Synergy

To use Synergy:

1. Install Synergy on every computer you want under control of your “server” and also on your server.

2. Start Synergy on the client computers, select Use another computer’s shared keyboard and mouse (client), type the name of your server*, and click Start.

* To get your server name, click on the Advanced… button and type the name you wish to use in the Screen Name field.

3. Open Synergy on your “server” (the computer that you’ll use to control the other computers connected.) Select Share this computer’s keyboard and mouse (server), and click Configure…

4. Under screens, click the plus sign and add each client, by Computer name*, to the list.

* To get your computer’s name, use your client’s Computer name. To get this, click the Start button, right click Computer, and click Properties. The name is listed next to Computer name.

5. Now you’ll need to tell Synergy where each screen is. In the example below, I have three computers next to each other:

GVD – SVUL – DXPL

I set the following rules (see screenshot), which states GVD is left of SVUL, SVUL is left of DXPL, DXPL is right of SVUL, and SVUL is right of GVD. I recommend leaving the percentages as is (unless you have a need to change them i.e. two screens, one on top of the other, to the left of one screen.)

6. Press OK and click Start.

You may get a pop up from your Firewall and you’ll need to allow the connection. If you are using third party software, you may need to add a manual rule to allow Synergy to communicate between your computers.

Please note: It can take up to one minute to establish a connection between your computers so please be patient.

Other Settings for Synergy

I use Synergy to control my Home Theater PC (HTPC) when I’m using my laptop. One thing I noticed, after installing Synergy, was that the screen didn’t power off after the HTPC was idle (a useful feature as I often walk away from my TV and leave it wasting electricity.) To fix this issue, I changed the setting on the server to not Synchronize screen savers. (As my laptop has a different screen power setting.)

You can also autostart Synergy when you start your PC (useful if you’re making this a permanent setup.)

At any time, you can see which computers are connected together by right clicking the Synergy icon in the system tray and clicking Show status.

I really like Synergy; it uses minimal system resources and just works. The only problem I’ve found is if you Remote Desktop into from a Synergy connected PC to another Synergy connected PC and move the mouse out of the screen (confused yet), the clipboard stops working; however, this is not really a problem — more of a quirk.

Download Synergy

Download Synergy

This time we’ll explore how to create a multiple choice menu that can trigger files, website and functions.

Create a multiple choice menu in a batch-file

There are endless possibilities to this, so what I’m about to show you will only cover a few bases that will point you in the direction you might want to go.

First up a few definitions

• Goto: The Goto Statement allows us to jump to a specific part of the script, like back to Start or the end.
• [Place]: When we use the Goto Statement we need a target. The Target or Place is defined by a Colon and a name (:HOME).
• Variables (or Var): Variables are small post-it notes that stores information (user input) for later use. In Batch Scripting we declare a variable with the SET command.
• ECHO: This Command is used to hide or show feedback to the user. Turning it OFF will make sure everything we do is invisible to the user.
• CLS: Clear Screen, empties the CMD-window
• Pause: Inserting the PAUSE command will pause the script from running until the user press a key.
• START or CALL: Commands used to trigger an event (a batch file, website etc)
• Exit: This command ends the script from running

Onto the Script

This script will do many things (to show you it’s possible). Under normal circumstances  you would create separate scripts for different functionality or tasks.

Open Notepad and enter the following code:

@echo off
title Multiple Choice Menu
:home
cls
echo.
echo Select a task:
echo =============
echo.
echo 1) Open www.mintywhite.com
echo 2) List Temp-files
echo 3) Run IpConfig.exe
echo 4) Run CleanUp.Bat
echo 5) Exit
echo.
set /p web=Type option:
if "%web%"=="1" start www.mintywhite.com
if "%web%"=="2" goto list
if "%web%"=="3" start ipconfig.exe
if "%web%"=="4" Call cleanup.bat
if "%web%"=="5" exit
goto home
:list
echo Listing files from c:\windows\temp
dir c:\windows\temp /p /b
Pause
goto home

Save the document as Menu.bat
Then Create another bat-file, call it cleanup.bat and save it in the same folder as the above.
Copy this code into it:

echo Removing Temp-files from c:\windows\temp
echo Note! If you get an error, you need to run
echo this with administrative privileges.
cd\
cd\windows\temp
Del *.tmp /Q
Pause

That’s all

Good luck to you. Should you have any questions about this, don’t hesitate to contact me here on in the Forum.

jv16 PowerTools is the ultimate Windows optimization and tune-up utility suite. The bottom line is that it keeps your computer running smooth, fast and greatly improves its overall stability. If you’re still (gasp!) using our old RegCleaner program, or an older version of PowerTools, it’s time to wake up and pay attention! PROS: Fast. Lightweight, Easy to Use. CONS:Not Free VERDICT:Overall the most reliable “optimization and tune-up utility suite” I have ever encountered. No matter if you are an experienced user or not – JV16 PowerTools will become your best friend – ensuring your computer a long and healthy life. PRICE: From $29,95 VERSION REVIEWED: 2.0.0.986 DOWNLOAD: JV16 Power Tools 2010

jv16 PowerTools 2010 is here and it’s sweet!

I’ll make no effort hiding the fact that this Suite is one of my all time favourites. I first discovered the program back in 2008, when searching for a tool to clean (and fix) my cluttered computer. Almost every tool promising to solve my computer problems, would somehow mess it up further, or was unsuccessful at solving it all. The reason I discovered was often that most problems lay in the registry. If you remove too much data from it, something is bound to crash, and removing too little, well… You know what happens … nothing.

Suite of tools

JV16 PowerTools isn’t just a registry tool, it’s a complete set of tools, designed for every part of your computer. When you boot JV16 PowerTools the program will assess your computer, displaying the approximate health of the system. The suite support 4 main areas (with several useful tools for each):

• Registry Tools
• File Tools
• System Tools
• Privacy Tools

Some of the functions are Backup/Restore Registry, Speed up Computer, Check for Viruses and Malware, Uninstall and File Cleanup and StartUp Control.

Registry Tools

The Registry tools consists of a Registry manager, Search and Replace, Cleaner, monitor and Compactor. To me The Registry Compactor has proven the most valuable. As the name suggests it compacts the registry, without removing data.  This is done by reconstructing the entire registry structure from scratch, eliminating all the empty spaces and other unneeded data. A cluttered and fragmented Registry will cause slow performance.

Speed Up Your Computer

This feature let you tweak your Windows to increase performance. With the intuitive interface and well written information it is very easy to tweak your windows safely.

Clean and Fix My Computer

This is a new feature in the 2010 edition, which searches and repairs any problems it finds. It Scans the registry for registry errors, obsolete and leftover data, MRU and history data, unneeded and leftover files that may be deleted.

Verify my downloads are safe to run

Another new feature is the anti-virus and malware tool which primarily is made to scan your download folders. It can also be used to scan single files (by drag and drop) should you worry that it might be contaminated.

Fully remove software and leftovers

I truly hate it when an uninstaller only removes the main program files, leaving DLL’s temp-files and folders. This is especially annoying when finding empty folders in the Start-Menu. At a first glance the tool looks exactly like the Add/Remove Software feature of Windows Control Panel, or any other third party products. Don’t be fooled though! This tool does what you’d expect any uninstaller should do. No more left overs.

Other tools included in the suite

• File Finder
• File Recovery and cleaner
• File Organizer
• File Tool Duplicate and File Finder
• Directory Finder
• Startup Manager and Start Menu Tool
• Automation Tool
• Service Manager and System Optimizer
• History Cleaner
• System Cleaner and Disk Wiper

Overall verdict

jv16 PowerTools is a full Windows optimization utility suite containing 27 different main tools, and dozens of smaller tools. In my experience, JV16 PowerTools is all you’ll ever need and want.

Ease of use

Aside from the intuitive interface – the developers have put a lot of effort into making the system as easy to use as humanly possible. Whatever task you will get easy to understand help and labels, guiding you through every step. No matter if you are an experienced user or not – JV16 PowerTools will become your best friend – ensuring your computer a long and healthy life.

But don’t just take my word for it – Try it now free for 60 days

Download JV16 PowerTools

Windows Guides’ Rating	User Rating	Compatible with
4 out of 5	Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

PROS: Quick installation and great features added with ease. One of the best features for me is the option to continue where you left off in a song when you close and re open WMP12. CONS: No cons really. It would be nice to see more features that could bump this up to a five-star program. If you can think of any features, let us know in the comments so we can pass them on to the developers. VERDICT: If you insist on using WMP12 (and, to be fair, it’s worthy of use), then this may make your experience even better. PRICE: Free VERSION REVIEWED: 1.1 DOWNLOAD: Windows Media Player Plus!

Windows Media Player Plus! Features

Windows Media Player Plus! integrates seamlessly with Windows Media Player 12 (WMP12) and adds the following functionality:

Let’s take a look at some of those features in action:

Find as You Type

Set the ‘find as you type’ feature on the Libarary panel of the Windows Media Player Plus! Settings.

Now, as you type song names, artists etc. in the search box, they appear, in real time, in the results pane:

Show Song Details in Title Bar

On the User Interface panel, check Show currently playing media in Windows Media Plater’s title bar.

The result:

File Context Menus in WMP

If you want quick access to the file context menu (so you can, for example, change the file from Read-only, find when the file was created etc.): click the Context Menus tab and check the File Menu options.

The result:

Tag Editor Plus

The Advanced Tag Editor has been removed in WMP12 so this replacement may come in handy for those who like to keep everything tidy, tag wise.

To get quick access to the Tag Editor Plus, click the Context Menus tab and check the Tag Editor Plus options.

Now you can access Tag Editor Plus big right clicking a song and clicking Tag Editor Plus…

…and you can edit the tags from here:

Restore Playing Media at Startup

Don’t you wish you could open WMP12 and have it continue where you left off? This is by far the best feature, for me, of Windows Media Player Plus!  In the Restore Media at Startup pane, select your preferences and enjoy continued playback even after closing WMP12.

There are a bunch of other options and, if any of these features sound good to you, I highly recommend you give this program a try.

Download Windows Media Player Plus!

Download Windows Media Player Plus!

In this How To guide I will be showing you how to create your own Start Orb for Windows 7.  I’ll be using Photoshop CS5.  Sorry to those who use alterative software.  I’m sure you’ll be able to follow using your preferred software however.

Step 1.

Start by creating a new document in Photoshop (Ctrl+N).  Match your settings to the screeny.

In this guide i have used 100% DPI, if you use 125% or 150% DPI then you’ll have to adjust the image size and the ‘Orb’ size accordingly.

125% DPI – use 66 x 198px
150% DPI – use 81 x 243px

Select Black as your foreground colour (D) and fill the background layer (Alt + Backspace).

Step 2.

Time for a bit of mental arithmetic. We must vertically divide the image into three.

I also like a nine pixel border as guide, to start working with the Orb.

Make sure Rulers (Ctrl+R) are visible and the Move tool (V) is selected.

Set the ruler to display Pixels by right clicking the white rule and selecting Pixels.

Click the Ruler and drag to these points.  At this point, you may find it handy to open the Info pallet (F8) to check your coordinates.  Click the small icon and set it to Pixels.

Horizontal Guides:

9 Pixels

45 Pixels

54 Pixels

63 Pixels

99 Pixels

108 Pixels

117 Pixels

153 Pixels

Vertical Guides:

9 Pixels

45 Pixels

Your image should now look, totally ridiculous!

Step 3.

Find the image you want to make into a Start Orb (preferably larger than forty pixels by forty pixels).  Open it in Photoshop and check it’s 72 Pixels/inch. (Ctrl+Alt+I)

We need to copy the image (Ctrl+A – Ctrl+C), switch over to your Black background and Paste (Ctrl+V).  A new layer will automatically be created, named “Layer 1” .  Double click the “Layer 1” text and rename it “top”.

Before making any adjustments to the size, change  the “top” layer into a ‘Smart Object’.  Do this by right clicking the “top” layer and selecting Convert to Smart Object.  (If you need to remove backgrounds etc. convert after your modifications).

You’ll know it’s converted by a small icon in the layer pallet.

Now we need to resize so it fits in our guide lines.

Use the Free Transform tool (Ctrl+T).  Grab a corner node, hold Shift and resize to fit.

Step 4.

Be sure the “top” layer is centred in the top guide box.

Duplicate (Ctrl+J) the layer, select the Move tool (V) then Shift Nudge down (Shift+↓) five times and nudge down (↓) a further four times (54 pixels).  Rename this layer “middle”.  Duplicate (Ctrl+J) the “middle” layer and repeat the Nudging.  Rename this layer “bottom” and drag n drop the layers into the appropriate order.

You should now be looking at something like this.

This is where the fun starts.  Adding the effects to the different button states; Normal, Hover & Clicked.

Adding glows to Hover & Clicked is quite common but off course, experiment to your hearts desire!

top = Normal

middle = Hover

bottom = Clicked

Step 5.

To those new to layer styles, double click the “middle” layer to bring up the Layer Style dialog box (Generally speaking you wouldn’t add any effects to Normal).  Here you can change the appearance of your orb.  As I mentioned, adding a glow is common so that’s what we’ll do.  Under Styles, click Outer Glow and check the check-box is ticked.  You can play around with many settings here but for this basic guide, will stick to colour and size.

Make your changes and then repeat on the “bottom” layer adding a subtle change.

You can, at any time change the glow (and many other things) by double clicking next to Outer Glow text in the layer to bring up the Layer Styles dialog box.  You can toggle the effect with the eye-ball.

Step 6.

Once you are happy with the different effects, we must deal with the alpha channel for transparency.

Merge the different Orb layers (Ctrl Click top, middle & bottom).  Right click and select Merge Layers.

All three Orbs will now be on one layer.  Ctrl-Click the image preview in the layers pallet.

You’ll see marching ants around the Orbs.

Select the Channels pallet and create a new channel.

Select the Brush tool (B), right click your image and set the Size to 200 pixels and the Hardness to 100%.  Change your foreground colour to White (X)

Click over your image once.

Step 7.

Deselect (Ctrl+D), click the RGB channel and switch back to the layers pallet.

Press Ctrl+Shift+S to bring up the Save As dialog box.

Save the image as a 32bit Bitmap file;

Now back in Photoshop, go to the History panel.

Go back to a state before the merge eg.

Then go back to Save As and save as a .psd.  You should do this so you can modify your orb again.  You’ll have to create the new alpha channel  and wot-not though.

And that is how to make your own Start Orb.  I know this has been a massive read and might seem like a nightmare but once you’ve done it a few times it’ll be a breeze!

You may need to slightly tweak the sizes and positions of the orbs, experiment and have fun.  If you like you can share them with our forums.

How To apply the Orb to your system;

A quick and easy way to apply your Orb to your system is to use this tool.  Check out the Readme file for instructions.

Or you could checkout our guide on how to do it manually.

The short version is that both kinds are small script files that can be used to execute functions or to do repetitive tasks. BAT is short for BATCH-file and is a very simple script-language from back then, when DOS was the ultimate PC OS. Some years later Microsoft decided (after much pun from the Linux, and Unix communities) to upgrade the functionality, thus creating VBS.

VBS is an abbreviation of Visual Basic Script, which is a light-version of the Visual Basic Language. Where the Batch-File mostly executes DOS commands the VBS is more powerful and can be used to create small applications, and process information. Where Batch-Files only run in DOS mode (Command Prompt), VBS is also used when creating standalone applications and in website programming. Both are a part of Windows, but might be more and more substituted by the new Powershell, which is available in Windows 7.

Both

You might wonder; If VBS is a more powerful alternative than BATCH, why keep the old Batch-language ? The answer is simple: Simplicity. Sometimes you don’ t need all the fancy functionality to do a task. And it requires much less effort and knowledge creating a Batch-File than a VBS-File.

Both Script languages can be created using Notepad. Save the file using either the .BAT or .VBS extension and Windows will know what to do.

What can I do with Batch ?

For the most parts, you execute DOS commands like Copy, Move, Rename etc. But you can also create simple multiple choice menus which need user input.

You don’t need to use (or learn) many codes or commands to get started. There are but a few, and the most important ones are ECHO, REM and PAUSE.

• The Batch-File is designed to give you feedback for each action executed. You can turn this off, by using the ECHO Command. ECHO OFF, turns feedback off, and ECHO ON, turns it back on.  You can also use ECHO to display a message to the user, like this: “ECHO Press any Button to continue”
• REM is short for REMARK, and is just a “programmers notes” inside the file.
• PAUSE is used to temporarily halt execution of the Batch-File, awaiting input from the user.

Batch Example

I will write another article on this, but for now, open Notepad and type the following:

@ECHO OFF

dir "C:\Program Files" > C:\list_of_program_files.txt

Save the document as FolderList.BAT, and run it (Double-Click the icon). This Batch-File will create a text-file listing up every file and folder in your Programs-Folder.

Another Example

Save the document as MoveTemp.bat, and execute it by double-clicking the icon. This Batch-File will move every TEMP-File from the windows temp-Folder into a new folder, then deleting them from the Windows Temp folder. It might be a crude example, but I think it gives you an idea of what you can do.

How do I use VBS ?

In short, VBS can do everything that Batch-Files can do – and more. As an object-oriented script language it requires a bit more know-how to use, but it’s not too difficult to overcome. If you remember the article I wrote on how to “make your computer greet you” then you have already seen VBS in action.

Common Expression

There are hundreds of expressions and functions that you can use, and I cannot cover everything in this article. The following is a crude and very short presentation of the most used functions or commands.

• Logical Expression (IF…THEN…ELSE) which we use to do calculations or run functions depending on different criteria. If you want to rename files that has certain words or letters in the filename, you would use the IF statement.
• Case Statement – is used to control what happens when different criteria are met. Similar to the above, but gives you a cleaner script.
• Conditional Expressions, or loops (WHILE, WITH) are used to repeat a task until criteria are met. If you want to rename every file in a folder, you do a loop to repeat the action until there are no more files present.

If you read my articles on Macros in Excel (Part1, Part2) you have already some knowledge on VBS as it is the same script-language used in the MS Office Suite.

VBS Example

Dim speaks, speech
speaks="Oh No, Not YOU again! Please Log Off now!"
Set speech=CreateObject("sapi.spvoice")with speech
Set .voice = .getvoices.item(0)
.Volume = 100
.Rate = 0
end withspeech.Speak speaks

This is the script used in the ”make your computer greet you” article

VBS Example 2

This example will unzip a certain file to a specific folder. This script can be set to collect information from the user before its run, but this example doesn’t do that.

pathToZipFile="C:\myzip.zip"
extractTo="C:\myfolder\" 'destination folder must exist!Set SA = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
Set filesInzip=SA.NameSpace(pathToZipFile).items
SA.NameSpace(extractTo).CopyHere(filesInzip)

One last thought

These are example of what you can do. To find more useful scripts to your own projects take a look here: http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/ScriptCenter/en-us/.