Understanding (VBscript) Windows Script Host Basics

Understanding Windows Script Host Basics

We assume you have Microsoft Windows Script Host 5.6 installed. If you aren’t sure, open a 

command prompt and type cscript //logo //?. You should see something like this.

Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.6 

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1996-2001. All rights reserved. 

Usage: CScript scriptname.extension [option...] [arguments...] 

Options: 

//B :Batch mode: Suppresses script errors and promptsfrom displaying 

//D :Enable Active Debugging 

//E  :engine Use engine for executing script 

//H  :CScript Changes the default script host to CScript.exe 

//H  :WScript Changes the default script host toWScript.exe (default) 

//I    :Interactive mode (default, opposite of //B) 

//Job :xxxx Execute a WSF job 

//Logo :Display logo (default) 

//Nologo :Prevent logodisplay: No banner will be shown at execution time 

//S      :Save currentcommand line optionsfor this user 

//T      :nn Time outin seconds: Maximum time a script is permitted to run 

//X      :Execute script indebugger 

//U      :Use Unicode for redirected I/O from the console

In the next sections, we’ll cover a few key WSH elements that recur in our scripts throughout 

the book.

Note Many of the scripts and samples in this book require administrator privileges, either 

locally or on remote systems. We assume you will be running any scripts as a local or domain 

administrator. Where appropriate, we will point out how and where to use alternate credentials.

WshShell

The WshShellobject offers a lot of functionality to scripting administrators. You can use it to 

send a message to the user through a popup, read and write to the registry, launch other programs, and more. Let’s take a quick look at this object.

Popup

The Popupmethod displays a graphical message to the user, complete with buttons and icons. 

One advantage to using the Popupmethod instead of the similar MsgBoxfunction (discussed 

later in this chapter) is that you can configure the popup window to dismiss itself automatically after a specified number of seconds. This is ideal when you want to display information 

to a user but you don’t want to rely on t he user to click OK. Listing 1-1 illustrates t he use of t he 

Popupmethod with a sample script.

 WshShell PopupSample

dim wshShell 

set wshShell=CreateObject("wscript.shell") 

'title for popup window 

strTitle="Welcome" 

'compose popup message text 

strMsg="Thank you for logging in." & VbCrLf 

strMsg=strMsg & "It is now " & Now & VbCrLf 

strMsg=strMsg & "Havea nice day." 

'set time to -1 to never dismiss popup window 

wshShell.Popup strMsg,7,strTitle,vbOKOnly+vbInformation

Notice that we use some intrinsic constants, vbOkOnly and vbInformation, as part of our 

popup parameters. These constants display the OK button and the information icon, respectively. These same constants are also used with the MsgBoxfunction. You can find more information about them in the Windows Script Host 5.6 documentation.