Category: cscript

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BSOD Command Prompt cscript Linux systeminfo Windows 2008 Windows 7 Windows Vista WMI wmic

Find Last Reboot Time in Windows 7, Vista and Windows 2008

Have you ever wanted a quick and easy way to know how long your Windows 7 (or Vista or Windows 2008 server) system has been running?  When it was last restarted or rebooted?  There are a few easy ways this can be done, most from the Windows command line.  So open a Windows command prompt and choose the one that works best for you.  (Most of these commands work with Windows XP, Windows 2003, 2000, etc.  See notes below for specifics.)

  • This first way will display how long the network service has been running.  Generally this will be very close to the same amount of time (within a minute or two) as Windows has been running.  It won’t be accurate if you restart the network service.
    Note: I listed this first because it’s the one I usually use.

    From a command prompt window run the following (the ‘S’ in ‘Statistics’ must be capitalized):

net statistics workstation | find "Statistics"

You can shortcut it as well using:

net stats work | find "Stat"

Result:

Or ever shorter use either of the following:

net stats work
netstats work |more

  • This next method uses the command ‘systeminfo.’  Again from a command prompt run (make sure to capitalize ‘S’, ‘B’ and ‘T’:

systeminfo | find "System Boot Time"

Result:

You can use the following on XP, Windows 2003 and earlier (however this will give only the length of uptime and not the system boot time):

systeminfo | find "Up Time"

  • The third method uses WMI, more specifically wmic (Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line), but the output is a little cryptic:

wmic OS Get LastBootUpTime

Result: 20091220133343.981621-300, which can be intrepreted as year 2009, month 12, day 20, hour 13 (or 1:00 PM), minute 33, etc.  Note: be careful as this may be displayed as UTC time depending on your system – like with Amazon EC2 virtual servers for example.

  • You can always use the system event log (this only works on 2003/XP or older).  Of course, you could go to Control Panel and browse through the system event log, but let’s do it through the command line with:

cscript c:windowssystem32eventquery.vbs /fi "ID eq 6005" /l system

Over the years I have found system event log event 6005, “The Event log service was started.” to be the the most consistent entry after a computer restarts, even from a power outage, BSOD or other event.  This command will also give you a history of system startups listed in the System event log.

  • Finally, you can use this handy PowerShell script:
    Get-WmiObject Win32_NTLogEvent -filter "LogFile='System' and EventCode=6005" | Format-Table ComputerName, EventCode, Message, TimeWritten

Just like with anything there are many ways to skin this cat, so choose your favorite one (or two to double-check data) and go for it.

Categories
Command Line cscript HTTP Headers IIS Linux Windows

Set IIS 6 (and IIS 7) custom HTTP headers from the command line

Command line method to set the Custom HTTP Headers.
*Must execute from (default) c:InetpubAdminScripts:

cscript adsutil.vbs set w3svc/HttpCustomHeaders “X-Powered-By: ASP.NET” “<Header 2>: <Value 2>” “<Header 3>: <Value 3>”

Just replace “Header 2”: “Value 2” and “Header 3”: “Value 3” with your own values. Add more as desired.

Note: This command updates/replaces current values and does not add to them so any existing value must be included or it will be overwritten. I included “X-Powered-By: ASP.NET” as it’s a common default HTTP header value.

This works on both IIS 6 and IIS 7, not sure about previous versions.

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cscript Linux Windows

Running scripts using the command-line-based script host (Cscript.exe)

You can run scripts with the command-line-based script host by typing the following at the command prompt:

cscript [script name] [host options] [script arguments]

Where:

• script name is the name of the script file, including the file name extension and any necessary path information.
• host options are the command-line switches that enable or disable various Windows Script Host features. Host options are always preceded by two slashes (//).
• script arguments are the command-line switches that are passed to the script. Script arguments are always preceded by one slash (/).

Note

• Each parameter is optional; however, you cannot specify script arguments without specifying a script. If you do not specify a script or any script arguments, Cscript.exe displays the Cscript.exe syntax and the valid host options.
• The command-line-based script host supports the following host options:

Parameter Action
//B
Specifies batch mode, which does not display alerts, scripting errors, or input prompts.
//D
Turns on the debugger.
//E:engine
Specifies the scripting language that is used to run the script.
//H:cscript or //H:wscript
Registers either Cscript.exe or Wscript.exe as the default script host for running scripts. If neither is specified, the default is Wscript.exe.
//I
Specifies interactive mode, which displays alerts, scripting errors, and input prompts. This is the default and the opposite of //B.
//Job:xxxx
Runs the job identified by xxxx in a .wsf script file.
//Logo
Specifies that the Windows Script Host banner is displayed in the console window before the script runs. This is the default and the opposite of //Nologo.
//Nologo
Specifies that the Windows Script Host banner is not displayed before the script runs.
//S
Saves the current command-prompt options for the current user.
//T:nnnnn
Specifies the maximum time the script can run (in seconds). You can specify up to 32,767 seconds. The default is no time limit.
//X
Starts the script in the debugger.
//?
Displays available command parameters and provides help for using them (this is the same as typing Cscript.exe with no parameters and no script).
• The time out option (//T:nnnnn) prevents excessive execution of scripts by setting a time limit. When execution time exceeds the specified value, Cscript.exe interrupts the script engine and stops the process.
• You can also use Windows Script Host to create .wsf script files, with which you can call multiple scripting engines and perform multiple jobs, all from one file.