Windows 'Scripts'

richard734

I have a multi screen set up (8 screens!) for monitoring and alerting on some stuff thats important to me.

However, I have another person, who habitually turns the box off or shuts screens down etc and is a general pain in the backside.

As you can imagine, opening up the various URL's, programs etc and getting them all back in order takes a while, and while I am OK at this PC stuff, I am not a code monkey

Is there any tools or simple methods of setting up some sort of script or EXE that will open and position everything where I want it? The idea being that when this person has finished fiddling, I can just click on it and let it sort everything back how it should be!

Tools and experiences please, unless anyone feels like some unpaid dev work for me

Simplistik

You haven't ruled it out, so are you aware of Fast User Switching?


Set up a second user account with their own profile.

I can switch between accounts in around 10 seconds
Go back to the other account and everything is just as it was.

Why reinvent the wheel?

Ectophile

At work, recently, we've been using a program called AutoIt to set up users' screens just the way we want them. It's a free download from the AutoIt web site http://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/

It can do pretty much anything a user with a keyboard and mouse could do - run programs, click and drag the mouse, even type stuff in to dialog boxes.

You need some programming knowledge to use it. Old school programmers who learned BASIC on their home computers in the 1980s should find it quite familiar.

richard734

Simplistik, if I could teach the Idiot to leave things alone, that would be a start It would require though and consideration on their behalf, and thats not going to happen soon!

Ectophile - that's the kiddy!! Thank you!

closed

simplest way, although it won't place window positions, is a batch file (with for IE, the url tagged onto the end of the browser command line)

ie

create a file whatever.bat

and put in the full path to each exe, one after the other, save and double click

eg (might not need the (x86), depending on your version of windows.)

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com

rmg1

I'm glad I found this thread because I'm looking for something similar.
I've just tried a simple test to open 3 apps on my machine and it's not going well.
This is my script so far:-
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /recycle
"C:\Documents and Settings\richard.green\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"
explorer.exe

When I run it, my emails open but then the cmd window doesn't go any further until I close my emails, then firefox opens but a Windows explorer window doesn't open until I close firefox.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

victor2

rmg1 wrote: »

This is my script so far:-
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /recycle
"C:\Documents and Settings\richard.green\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"
explorer.exe

When I run it, my emails open but then the cmd window doesn't go any further until I close my emails, then firefox opens but a Windows explorer window doesn't open until I close firefox.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Put start "" in front of the command to launch outlook, so that it will be launched and the script will not wait for Outlook to exit before continuing.

rmg1

Thanks Victor2. I'll give it a go and see what happens.
Will that need to go in front of every line?

::edit::
Just tested it with the start "" in front of every line and it works as I want it to. Thanks for the help.