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I created a script, bios-info.vbs from the code provided on Microsoft's webpage that will retrieve the information from the BIOS.
I have the Toshiba Power Management Utility configured on the system to sound an alarm and display a message when the battery charges drops to 10%. I have it configured to sound an alarm, display a message, and hibernate when the charge drops to 5%. But it never takes those actions. Instead, the laptop just powers off.
So that I could at least have some forwarning of when the battery charge is getting very low, I installed Laptop Battery Power Monitor, which places a battery widget on the desktop which displays the battery's charge level and which appears above other windows.
When you run the downloaded file, setup.exe, by default, it will
attempt to extract the files stored within itself to
c:\Temp\BatteryMonitor2006. If there is no c:\Temp
directory, you will receive the message below:
| WinZip Self-Extractor |
 Could not
create "c:\Temp\BatteryMonitor2006" - unzip operation cancelled.
|
In that case, choose another directory into which the files will be extracted. The software requires 6,992 KB of free space on the disk on which it will be installed.
The installation process creates a program group named Duomart.com. Within it you will find a Laptop Battery Power Monitor group. When you run the progam it will place a battery widget on your desktop showing the battery charge level.
That widget will remain over top of windows that you open. Moving the mouse pointer over it will display information about the state of the battery. If you right-click on it, you can change the size of the battery displayed. You also have the option to adjust its transparency or close the program.
The software can be downloaded from the developer website, which is a source for purchasing computer accessories, bluetooth devices, or laptop batteries. Other sources for the software are listed below.
Download Sites
DuoMart
MoonPoint Support
FileBuzz
Wallpaper
in the registry key
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\LastTheme.
I can do so using the reg query command.
C:\>reg query HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\LastTheme /v
Wallpaper
! REG.EXE VERSION 3.0
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\LastTheme
Wallpaper REG_EXPAND_SZ %SystemRoot%\Web\Wallpaper\Ripple.jpg
From a batch file, though, I only want the filename, i.e.
%SystemRoot%\Web\Wallpaper\Ripple.jpg.
I can select just that part of the output usng the
FOR /F command in a batch
file. The syntax of the FOR /F command is as follows:
FOR /F ["options"] %%parameter IN ('command_to_process') DO command
Key
options:
delims=xxx The delimiter character(s)
(default = a space)
skip=n A number of lines to skip at the beginning.
(default = 0)
eol=; Character at the start of each line to indicate a comment
The default is a semicolon ; Use "eol=" to process all lines
tokens=n Specifies which numbered items to
read from each line
(default = 1)
usebackq Specify `back quotes`
the command_to_process is placed in `BACK quotes`
instead of 'straight' quotes
command_to_process : The output of the 'command_to_process' is
passed into the FOR parameter.
command : The command to carry out, including any
command-line parameters.
%%parameter : A replaceable parameter:
in a batch file use %%G (on the command line %G)
FOR /F processing of a command consists of reading the output from
the command one line at a time and then breaking the line up into individual
items of data or 'tokens'. The DO command is then executed with the
parameter(s) set to the token(s) found.
By default, /F breaks up the command output at each blank space, and any blank lines are skipped. You can override this default parsing behavior by specifying the "options" parameter. The options must be contained within double quotes.
In this case, the last line of output is the following:
Wallpaper REG_EXPAND_SZ %SystemRoot%\Web\Wallpaper\Ripple.jpgThe delimiter between the fields in the output is the tab character
(I checked for whether the delimiter was spaces or tabs with
hod
by redirecting the output of the reg query command to a file with
reg query
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\LastTheme /v Wallpaper
> temp.txt).
For the FOR /F command, the default delimiter is the space and
tab characters so I don't have to specify delims=. But, if
I don't, the output will be incorrect in cases where the path name or
file name contain spaces, since the second space will be treated as
a demarcation point, so that the space-separated parts of the path name or file
name are treated as separate tokens.
"Tokens" are the parts of the line separated by the delimiter. In this case,
I'm only interested in the third token, i.e.
%SystemRoot%\Web\Wallpaper\Ripple.jpg,
so I can use the following lines in a batch file:
FOR /F "tokens=3" %%R in ('reg query HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\LastTheme /v Wallpaper') DO SET wallpaper=%%R
echo %wallpaper%I used the tokens=3 option to select just the third
token on the output line. The %%R for the parameter name
is arbitrary. I could have called it %%S, %%T, etc.,
instead, if I wished. The command I wished to process is enclosed
between '( and )'. Note: for the reg
query command, if the registry key contains spaces in the key name,
then you must enclose the registry key name within double quotes as in the
following batch file example:
@echo off
FOR /F "tokens=3" %%R in ('reg query "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /v ConvertedWallpaper') DO SET wallpaper_file=%%R
echo %wallpaper_file%
The output produced by the batch file is shown below:
C:\WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper\Ripple.jpg
But, if I checked the value for OriginalWallper in the
registry key
HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop with reg query as below,
I would see a path name containing spaces.
C:\>reg query "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /v OriginalWallpaper
! REG.EXE VERSION 3.0
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
OriginalWallpaper REG_SZ C:\Documents and Settings\James\Local Settings\A
pplication Data\Microsoft\Wallpaper1.bmpIf I don't specify delims= in the batch file, e.g., if I use
the code below, I would get incorrect output.
@echo off
FOR /F "tokens=3" %%R in ('reg query "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /v OriginalWallpaper') DO SET wallpaper_file=%%R
echo %wallpaper_file%
The output would be as shown below:
C:\Documents
That is because C:\Documents will be treated as one token
and then the space between Documents and and Settings
is treated as the demarcation point between two tokens. But, if I instead
include delims= and immediately hit the tab key, that
problem won't occur, since the the horizontal tab character between the fields
will be used to break up the line into tokens.
@echo off
FOR /F "delims= tokens=3" %%R in ('reg query "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /v OriginalWallpaper') DO SET
wallpaper_file=%%R
echo %wallpaper_file%
You can't see any character after the delims=, but in order
for the FOR /F command to work in this case, I had to
type delims= and then hit the tab key while editing the file
in Windows Notepad. If you then save the file, it will produce the correct
output, e.g.:
C:\Documents and Settings\James\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Wallpaper1.bmp
Note: if you are using Vim as your editor
on a Windows system, as I usually do, then you need to insert the tab character
after delims= by hitting the Ctrl-I keys simultaneously.
You can then hit the spacebar and type tokens=. If you just
hit the tab key, your output won't be as you expect.
Wallpaper-info.bat is an example batch file to query the values in
the Windows registry pertaining to the file used for the Windows wallpaper
using the FOR /F command.
References:
hod.exe from
the zip file
available on the author's website.
If you just type hod file the contents of file will be displayed
in both hexadecimal and
ASCII.
C:\>"C:\Program Files\Utilities\hod.exe" temp.txt
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f 0123456789abcdef
0: 0d 0a 21 20 52 45 47 2e 45 58 45 20 56 45 52 53 ..! REG.EXE VERS
10: 49 4f 4e 20 33 2e 30 0d 0a 0d 0a 48 4b 45 59 5f ION 3.0....HKEY_
20: 43 55 52 52 45 4e 54 5f 55 53 45 52 5c 53 6f 66 CURRENT_USER\Sof
30: 74 77 61 72 65 5c 4d 69 63 72 6f 73 6f 66 74 5c tware\Microsoft\
40: 57 69 6e 64 6f 77 73 5c 43 75 72 72 65 6e 74 56 Windows\CurrentV
50: 65 72 73 69 6f 6e 5c 54 68 65 6d 65 73 5c 4c 61 ersion\Themes\La
60: 73 74 54 68 65 6d 65 0d 0a 20 20 20 20 57 61 6c stTheme.. Wal
70: 6c 70 61 70 65 72 09 52 45 47 5f 45 58 50 41 4e lpaper.REG_EXPAN
80: 44 5f 53 5a 09 25 53 79 73 74 65 6d 52 6f 6f 74 D_SZ.%SystemRoot
90: 25 5c 57 65 62 5c 57 61 6c 6c 70 61 70 65 72 5c %\Web\Wallpaper\
a0: 52 69 70 70 6c 65 2e 6a 70 67 0d 0a 0d 0a Ripple.jpg....
For help on using the program, use the -h option.
C:\>"C:\Program Files\Utilities\hod.exe" -h usage: C:\Program Files\Utilities\File\Analysis\hod.exe [options] <filename> Where the options are: -v : show version information -h : show this help -o : dump in octal -8 : show as block of 8 bytes -x str : convert a hex input to decimal -d : show offsets in decimal -s : show identical output lines -r : reverse hod hexdump to binary -w : reverse regular hex bytes to binary If no filename specified, it will read from stdin Example: $ hod file $ hod < file $ cat file | hod $ cat file | hod - $ hod < file $ hod -o file $ echo "hello" | hod $ echo -n "hello" | hod $ hod -x 1c0 1c0 : 448 $ echo "0a 01 ff ef 0b" | hod -w > bin.bin $ hod bin.bin | hod -r > bin_again.bin
Note: -r and -w works with hexadecimal only.
If you want to convert an ASCII string, such as the word hello,
to its hexadecimal equivalent, you can use the echo command to
pipe the word to hod, as below.
C:\>echo hello | "C:\Program Files\Utilities\hod.exe"
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f 0123456789abcdef
0: 68 65 6c 6c 6f 20 0a hello .
From the above output, you can see that the letters in hello
have the following hexadecimal equivalent representation.
| ASCII | Hex | Note |
|---|---|---|
| h | 68 | |
| e | 65 | |
| l | 6c | |
| l | 6c | |
| o | 6f | |
| SP | 20 | space |
| LF | 0a | line feed |
A space (hex 20) is listed after hello, since there was a space
between the word and the | pipe operator that feeds the output of
the echo command to hod. If I had placed the
| immediately after hello, i.e.
echo hello|, it wouldn't have been listed. A line feed (hex 0a) is
shown after the space.
Download hod
Author's
website
