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Microsoft® Windows® Scripting Self-Paced Learning Guide Edition Unstated

by Ed Wilson (Author)
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 35 ratings
See all formats and editions
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Automate everyday administrative tasks—and take greater control of your Windows networks—with this hands-on guide to scripting. Your instructor, a Microsoft Certified Trainer with more than a decade of enterprise consulting experience, expertly builds your scripting expertise with labs and lessons you complete at your own pace. From writing your first scripts from scratch with Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) and Windows Script Host (WSH)—to exploring the programmatic advantages of using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and Active Directory Service Interface (ADSI)—you’ll learn timesaving ways to set up, deploy, and manage your Windows-based systems.

Teach yourself how to write and run scripts to:

  • Automate folder and file management—including performing multiple functions-within a single script
  • Configure network components using WMI
  • Perform global—or select—changes to users and groups in Active Directory directory service using ADSI
  • Design logon scripts that increase system manageability and configurability
  • Monitor and manage printers
  • Edit the registry—avoiding common pitfalls
  • Track and respond to critical events
  • Simplify user management for Microsoft Exchange Server
  • Streamline IIS website administration—including creating consistent security configurations

PLUS—Get 100+ script samples on CD you can use or customize to help simplify the management of your system resources

Get 100+ sample scripts plus an eBook inside.

CD features:

  • More than 100 sample scripts to adapt for your own work
  • Timesaving scripting tools—including Script-o-Matic 1.0 and an evaluation version of PrimalScript
  • Fully searchable electronic version of the book

A Note Regarding the CD or DVD

The print version of this book ships with a CD or DVD. For those customers purchasing one of the digital formats in which this book is available, we are pleased to offer the CD/DVD content as a free download via O'Reilly Media's Digital Distribution services. To download this content, please visit O'Reilly's web site, search for the title of this book to find its catalog page, and click on the link below the cover image (Examples, Companion Content, or Practice Files). Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to booktech@oreilly.com.

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Previous page
  1. ISBN-10
    0735619816
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0735619814
  3. Edition
    Edition Unstated
  4. Publisher
    Microsoft Press
  5. Publication date
    May 5, 2004
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    7.38 x 1.25 x 9 inches
  8. Print length
    416 pages
  9. See all details
Next page
Amazon First Reads | Editors' picks at exclusive prices

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ed Wilson is a well-known scripting expert who delivers popular scripting workshops to Microsoft customers and employees worldwide. He's written several books on Windows scripting, including Windows PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices, Microsoft® Windows PowerShell Step By Step, and Microsoft VBScript Step by Step. Ed is a senior consultant at Microsoft Corporation and writes Hey, Scripting Guy!, one of the most popular TechNet blogs.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Microsoft Press; Edition Unstated (May 5, 2004)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0735619816
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0735619814
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.86 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.38 x 1.25 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 35 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Ed Wilson

Ed Wilson

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Ed Wilson, MCSE, MSCBA, MCT is the Microsoft Scripting Guy. As such, he writes the popular Hey Scripting Guy blog for Microsoft, speaks at conferences such as TechEd and TechReady. He is very active in the community and has spoken to numerous user groups around the world via Live Meeting and in person. Ed has written numerous books about VBScript, WMI, and Windows PowerShell scripting and his latest release is Windows PowerShell 2.0 Best Practices. In addition he wrote all the scripts for the Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 Resource kits. Ed lives in York, South Carolina and Ed has been with Microsoft since 2001. Prior to becoming the writer of the Hey Scripting Guy blog Ed taught scripting workshops worldwide to Microsoft Premier customers.

Customer reviews

3.8 out of 5 stars
3.8 out of 5
35 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

nksunset
5.0 out of 5 stars Good learning tool and sample script reference
Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2005
Verified Purchase
This book does not cover the in-depth mechanics behind the scripting language.. Stuff most people find their eyeballs rolling around in their head while trying to read. Instead it takes the 'common man' approach and presents admin scripting in a practical, easy to implement way. I recommend this book for admins who are not very experienced with vbscript and want to be able to learn and produce workarble scripts quickly. It also comes with a CD of sample scrips, labs and a ebook copy of the book.
One person found this helpful
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SGWINN3
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2016
Verified Purchase
Helps a bunch.
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Nick
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Beginner Scripting Book
Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2013
Verified Purchase
I purchased the e-book version and the regular book. Both were a good read and I liked the examples. Very helpful information for a beginner.
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Blikoor
1.0 out of 5 stars Avoid getting this book
Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2010
Verified Purchase
I should have paid attention to the negative reviews - yet there are not enough of them. This book is positively awful. It is hard to know where to begin. The degrees of awfulness should probably be divided between bad for people unfamiliar with programming and people familiar with programming.

Then, there is badness in how the book is structured and the information presented. Even the simplest of concepts are repetitively broken down into 4 parts. Before you buy, look at the on-line table of contents. The chapter headings of "Header Information," "Reference Information," Worker Information," and "Output Information" are repeated for practically every sub-chapter and every example in the book. These sections are not meaningful in terms of the information conveyed. If the author dealt with some of the concepts once and then dispensed with them, the book would have been more concise and perhaps easier to read.

Let me deal with one part, the "Header Information." In this, the author describes (every time, the two statements "Option Explicit" and "On Error Resume Next." How many times do we have to have mention of the same two statements? Especially if his recommendation of usage of the On Error statement is fatally flawed.

Look at this very simple example. The variable x is not defined, so the If test at best should fail, yet if you run this you will find that the code reflects the "True" condition. Notice that there may be many other reasons for the test to fail other than this failure to define the variables. Also, other important functions may not failed, that the code relies on, yet the author's recommendation will have the code executing as if nothing is amiss.

Option Explicit
On Error Resume Next
Dim a, b, c

a = "test pass"
b = "test fail"

If x = a then
wscript.Echo a
else
Wscript.Echo b
end if

A good example of this is when I tried running one of the early samples on my Vista machine and I simply got no output. It took me a good long while to figure out that the registry keys referenced in the sample did not exist in my registry and that every read to the registry failed.

There is a lack of reference information for the language itself. As an example, let me quote the 3 paragraphs where the intrinsic VBScript constants is discussed:

"You use the vbCrLf command to perform what is called a carriage return and line feed. vbCrLf is an intrinsic constant, which means that it is a constant that is built into VBScript. Since intrinsic constants are built into VBScript, you don't need to define them as you do regular constants. You'll use other intrinsic constants as you continue to develop VBScripts in later chapters.

vbCrLf has its roots in the old-fashioned manual typewriter. Those things had a handle on the end that rolled the platen up one or two lines (the line feed), and then repositioned the type head (the carriage return). Like the typewriter handle, the vbCrLf command positions the text to the first position on the following line. It's a very useful command for formatting text in both dialog boxes and text files. The last line in our If...Then construct is the End If command. End If tells VBScript that we're finished using the If...Then command. If you don't include End If, VBScript complains with an error.

After using End If, you have the Loop command on a line by itself. The Loop command belongs to the Do While construct that began the Worker and Output Information section. Loop sends the script execution back to the Do While line. VBScript continues to Loop through, reading the text file and looking for ' marks, as long as it doesn't reach the end of the text stream. When VBScript reaches the end of the text stream from the DisplayComputerNames script, you display a message that says you're finished processing the script. This is important, because otherwise there would be no indication that the script has concluded running. You then close your two files and the script is done. In reality, you don't need to close the files because they will automatically close once the script exits memory, but closing the files is good practice and could help to avoid problems if the script hangs."

Note how much of it is not a discussion of the vbCrLf constant or any other constant, for that matter, note that there is absolutely no mention of Appendix A where all the other intrinsic constants are listed and if you look in the Index of the book, there is no reference other than the reference to this section.

The first chapters are tough to get into, they spend a very long time on repetitive information that will not move you forward, as each sample introduces concepts that are not explained then, but postponed for explanation in later sections. So you work through these samples that does something, but does not explain the "something" in any great depth. This is why other books use the "Hello world" sample in early stages of introducing the language - you are not obscuring the language constructs with methods and objects that have not yet been introduced.

Then there are the quirky items that are unnecessary in a learning book, for instance, the author discusses documentation under the chapter heading "Docs that make house calls." How is that informative or meaningful?

Or, for instance this gem: "I've been calling this the Sleep command, but in programming speak it would be called the Sleep method of the WScript object. However, if I called it that, this book would sound like a programmer's reference and therefore would be boring. So I'll just call it the Sleep command and be done with it."

I can find no reason at all to recommend this book.
3 people found this helpful
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digitalshadow
3.0 out of 5 stars Definitely room for improvement
Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2005
First off, let me say that I am an absolute beginner when it comes to writing scripts for the Microsoft Windows platform, but not a beginner to writing scripts for other platforms, such as Unix and Linux. I purchased this book because it advertised on the back cover that I could "learn how to automate Windows administration with practical, hands-on instruction from a Microsoft scripting expert." I briefly glanced through the book while at the bookstore and liked the author's approach to presenting a topic at the beginning of a chapter and then supplying "hands-on" lab exercises at the end of the chapter. That's the good. Now for the bad.

The book does not provide enough background information on a lot of topics, which means you'll need to get a second source for reference information. Some of the topics are not covered as thoroughly as they should have been. Two examples readily come to mind. The first is the Select..Case control structure. While the author does introduce you to the Select..Case control structure and gives an example, he totally neglects to explain how you would specify a default case that would be executed in the event none of the other cases matched. A more frustrating example is simply how to exit a script unconditionally. Sounds trivial, I know. Yet, experience has taught me there are times when it useful to abort a script unconditionally. For example, if you are automating the installation of an application and have placed code in the script to determine whether or not there is sufficient disk space available to perform the installation. If the code determines there is insuffucient disk space, then it might be appropriate to abort script execution. I could not find an example in the book that demonstrated how to do this.

In summary, other than the aforementioned issues, I did learn enough from the book to get started writing scripts for Windows. Additional information to fill in the gaps was obtained primarily from the devguru.com website, which I would recommend as a great reference on VBScript and WSH.
16 people found this helpful
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R. Harmon
5.0 out of 5 stars Good information
Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2006
Verified Purchase
This book had everything I was looking for and is a good source of information.
One person found this helpful
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Perri Watson
4.0 out of 5 stars Great condition!
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2015
Verified Purchase
Great condition!
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Top reviews from other countries

E. Bourgeois
5.0 out of 5 stars I thought I was getting the picture
Reviewed in Canada on April 27, 2011
Verified Purchase
After getting a few other books and failing miserably with them, I was able to read excerpts of this book online (on Amazon.ca) and quickly understood that this was my last chance to get me up and going with scripting.

At first, the guide is simple, clear and perfect for anyone brand new to VBS in order to learn the basic structure without which you will never get it...
After a few chapters however, you get to be lost anyway - if you're not a programmer or think like one then it becomes a bunch of nonsense which you won't remember unless you use it all day long... good luck to you anyway.
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