Learning to Fly - Mika's Blog

You might have come across version 1.0 of the Scriptomatic tool. Microsoft Scripting Guys wrote that little tool to make it a no-brainer to accomplish simple WMI scripts. The tool itself was a great little addition to the toolbox of a Windows administrator but the story behind it is probably the funniest you'll find at the moment on www.microsoft.com :) BTW, you can also find the story as Write WMI Scripts Like the Pros.doc when when you uncompress the downloaded scriptomatic.exe.

Last week they released Scriptomatic 2.0. The title of the properties of the readme.doc accompanying the tool summarizes it all: "Back in the good old days, people were much easier to please than they are now". The readme.doc reveals that the guys have done some homework at least in religion, history, literature and arts (especially pop music) in the seek of making the second release a success. And I must admit, they've succeeded - also in the readme department. The funniest and most entertaining story of version 1.0 has got even more entertaining (and sould I say cultivating) successor. It is stated that version 1.0 has been downloaded almost half a million times. Consequently, the readme included a transcript of a press conference! The tool itself has also improved. I recommend you to read the readme, which details all improvements and new features. The highlights are:

• Using any WMI local or remote (!) namespace (instead of just root\CIMV2 as in version 1.0)
• Output directed to command prompt, txt, HTML or Excel
• Script in VBScript, JScript, Perl, or Python
• Easy to target the script to multiple computers
• Handles arrays and displays dates in more readable format

The readme is so entertaining that I don't want to even try to list the features. Go get the tool install (uncompress) it and read the readme.doc yourself! You won't be disappointed.

In addition to the Scriptomatic, you might also have a look at WMI Tools (for exploring WMI) and the latest version of TechNet Script Center Sample Scripts. Also, see the WMI scripting primer (part 1, part 2 and part 3) that those Scripting Guys wrote.