Today I needed to get the system boot time of my computer. You can either open the system log and look for the entries a Windows start up writes there, or you can let a tool do the work: @echo off systeminfo | find "System Boot Time" pause In my case the result looks like … Continue reading Getting the system boot time in Windows
Category: Windows
Opening an explorer window from the folder select dialog
Ever used a program that showed one of the folder select dialogs and you wanted to open a normal explorer window showing that folder? There is no button for that and no entry in the popup menu, but you can add one: Create a new shortcut in C:\Users\≶yourname>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo Enter "Explorer" as the location and name … Continue reading Opening an explorer window from the folder select dialog
Problem accessing a Windows XP share from a Windows 7 PC
Today a problem drove me crazy: I tried to map a share on a PC running Windows XP from another computer running Windows 7. I kept getting the error that the username or password are invalid. On the other hand, accessing a share on the Windows 7 PC from the Windows XP PC worked fine. … Continue reading Problem accessing a Windows XP share from a Windows 7 PC
WinHlp32 for Windows 8.1
Microsoft dropped support for the old WinHelp (*.hlp) file format in Windows 7 (or was it in Vista?). They provided a download that added the missing WinHlp32.exe (and probably quite a few other files) back so we could display .hlp files again. Today I had the need to do that on Windows 8.1. Unfortunately I … Continue reading WinHlp32 for Windows 8.1
Creating animated GIFs from screenshots
I have posted two animated GIFs lately to show features of GExperts or the popup menu entry for Windows Defender. These GIFs were created using ScreenToGif which is an open source tool written by Nike S. Manarin. One feature of it that I particularly like is that it is a "Portable App", that is, it … Continue reading Creating animated GIFs from screenshots
Add a “Scan with Windows Defender” context menu to any folder or file
Windows Defender is the virus scan tool that is included with Windows 8 and later. While it provides basic security it does not have any of the convenience functions that other virus scanners have. In particular I miss a context menu option to scan a file or folder. So I turned to Google and found … Continue reading Add a “Scan with Windows Defender” context menu to any folder or file
How to disable update checking in TortoiseSVN?
The latest 1.9.x versions of TortoiseSVN no longer support Windows XP (1.8.12 was the last one that did). Since some of the computers I work with are stuck with XP there isn't much sense in having it check for updates automatically. Older versions of TortoiseSVN used to have a check box on the settings "General" … Continue reading How to disable update checking in TortoiseSVN?
Batch wizardry: Finding a subdir in all parent dirs
As an addition to Using my buildtools here is a batch subroutine to find a subdirectory in any of the parent directories of a script: :FindInParents @rem search all parent directories for a subdir and return @rem the full path to that directory in %result% setlocal set parentdir=%1% set subdir=%2% :loop call :GetDir %parentdir% set … Continue reading Batch wizardry: Finding a subdir in all parent dirs
Running SyncThing as a Windows service
Yesterday I blogged about SyncThing as an alternative to BitTorrentSync. Today a business partner asked me whether it is possible to run SyncThing as a service. The answer is definitely yes, but it requires an additional tool. As per this StackOverflow answer you can use NSSM - the Non-Sucking Service Manager to create a service … Continue reading Running SyncThing as a Windows service
SyncThing as an alternative to BitTorrentSync (btsync)
A while ago I blogged about using BitTorrentSync as a privacy conscious alternative to the more popular cloud services like Google Drive or DropBox. BitTorrent recently released btsync version 2 which, apart from trying to sell you a so called PRO version, changed the user interface yet again and also changed the way you set … Continue reading SyncThing as an alternative to BitTorrentSync (btsync)