Same name of executable, different location, set priorities - windows-xp

I have build an executable that has the same body (the name is tree.exe) with one that windows is provided at C:\WINDOWS\system32 (tree.com).
I have set my Environment Variables that the path where my .exe resides and normally it eould be executed run, though as the same name appears in a different location the tree.com is run instead.
The question is, is it possible to set the priorities where my tree.exe can be executed instead of tree.com. Furthermore, as after the build the tree.exe is dumped to a server other users have the same problem, they cannot just run directly, they need to locate the actual item and double click it.
Any ideas?
Thanks.

I'm not quite sure, but i think you should have the path to your executable before the system paths in PATH variable. Don't forget to reopen the console after the variables have been changed.

Related

Changed Starting Path with PowerShell Profile But Cannot Change it Back

While learning Anaconda I had a problem with "cd" not working in Anaconda PowerShell, so I did what is recommended here, manually created a profile and set the path to a specific folder. It worked.
But today somehow I found "cd" is working for me again, so I was going to delete that ps1 file. But the folder together with the file in that was no loner there, completely gone. Now I am stuck with my temporary path on every PowerShell start-up.
According to Microsoft documentation, $profile should return my profile variables, which it did:
C:\Users\myname\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
But first, this is not the file name I gave it; second, this path is also non-existent, both folder and file.
I tried notepad $profile, then Notepad told me "The system cannot find the path specified." But it is exactly the path the system told me.
Some answer I saw here says that is because my profile is non-existent, I need to create one first. That is not the case here. I definitely overwrote my starting path, but I cannot find the actual profile file to edit that back.
I also tried doing it the same way again but changing "YOUR_FILE_PATH" into "%Home" hoping to "overwrite" it back, yet somehow this time it did not work and the file did not disappear as it did the first time.
I am really confused on this.
If you want to reset PowerShell to the original settings when PowerShell was installed.
Uninstall PowerShell from the Add or Remove Programs.
Restart your computer.
Reinstall PowerShell.

Overriding extensions directory in vscode

One can specify the extension dir by running from command line:
code --extensions-dir c:\path\to\ext
However, I would like to set this parameter even when running from the windows menu.
I tried to modify the argv.json file located in the .vscode folder (like for https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/getstarted/locales).
It didn't work.
Does anybody know how to fix this?
Bests
Try creating an environment variable called VSCODE_EXTENSIONS with the value of c:\path\to\ext
As a complement to DG's response
If the VSCODE_EXTENSIONS environment variable is created as a system variable, it seems to affect all users.
In my case, I performed the following steps:
close VSCode on all users (I usually have one session open as
administrator and another as non-administrator)
set the variable VSCODE_EXTENSIONS = c:\ProgramData\Code\extensions\
moved all extensions from the extensions folder of the administrator to c:\ProgramData\Code\extensions\
restart the computer
log in with both users and the extensions were available
It is convenient to mention since then the extensions installed by administrator are available to all users and are installed in the folder mentioned previously.

xcopy is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file

I have a problem using 'xcopy' command.
I'm building a C# project with msbuild. At the end of the build, a batch file is called to copy my assemblies from Debug/Release to some other folders.
Here is the problem, my build fail and the error log is 'xcopy is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file'.
The path is correctly set, xcopy do works from a windows command line and from the visual studio command line (the one set with the project environment).
I tried to set the path in the batch file but it doesn't help.
Any suggestion?
I'm using windows 7
Cheers :)
I encountered the same problem.
It seems to be a problem with the path environment variable within Visual Studio.
When I added a "path" statement to the beginning of my build event, it produced the following output:
PATH=
This seems to indicate that the path is empty within the VS build environment.
When I specify the full path to xcopy like this, the problem went away:
%systemroot%\System32\xcopy ...
I'm not sure what caused Visual Studio to lose it's path.
Set Environment variable PATH = %SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;%SYSTEMROOT%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\
This is not a problem with Windows 7 or 8. It's actually a problem with applications that update environment variables such as PATH.
The PATH is stored in the Registry as an "Expandable string value" (REG_EXPAND_SZ), but a lot of applications write it back to the Registry as a "String Value" (REG_SZ). If your path contains anything like %SYSTEMROOT%, this will not be expanded into C:\Windows (or whatever yours is) if the path is stored in a REG_SZ.
The fix is simply to edit your path manually from the control panel. You need to make a change (eg add a ; to the end of the path) and then apply it. This will fix up your path in the Registry to be a REG_EXPAND_SZ.
(Go to the System Control Panel and select Advanced System Settings. Edit the Path Environment variable in the lower box, and that should fix it.
You can tell whether your path is broken in this way by opening a command prompt and typing PATH. Your path will be listed. If you can see anything enclosed in % % then your path is not being expanded.
It happened to me after I updated one of my Visual Studio extensions, during which Visual Studio was closed and reopened by the updater. I could no longer properly build my project. I closed Visual Studio and reopened it and the problem went away.
I just experienced this for the first time with a batch file I use to copy an Access front-end app to the user's local machines. Their environment is a mix of Windows 7 & 8 and 32-64 bit machines. I noticed that the xcopy.exe was both in the System32 and the SysWOW64 folders and I wondered if there was some conflict. So -- I copied the xcopy.exe into the folder where the batch file resides and it now seems to be working. Just thought I'd share this.
Eileen
I also had a problem with xcopy (same error message) - with a very simple batch program that I use to backup files to a removable drive. Have been using that program for at least 5 years with never a problem. Then yesterday xcopy is unknown to Win7. The replacement of xcopy with %systemroot%\System32\xcopy at each instance solved the problem. Very strange.
Go to environment variable and correct PATh including ; in last.
It will work, this is not at all related to OS or Technology.
It's working for me, Not even need to restart OS, Just open new command prompt.
[Fixed for me]
After adding the correct paths to "Path" environmental variable it still doesn't work (for cmd and VisualStudio) (even after restarting the PC).
The problem was in broken register parameter:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment]
ParameterName=PATHEXT
I had the value .wlua;.|exe. Maybe was broken after installing something.
Everything works again after changing it to:
.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.MSC
Hope this helps if nothing other works.

Is there a good reason why PowerShell uses the Documents folder as a default location for scripts?

Is there a good technical or other reason why the MS hard-coded the Documents folder as the default location for WindowsPowerShell? MS has been criticized for too much configuration over convention in the past (WCF?), but a case can be made for more configuration in PowerShell. I, and I presume most developers, like to keep their development work centralized in a separate folder or volume away from personal and system files.
For instance, if you install PoshGit, it will install itself in C:\Users\Your Name\WindowsPowerShell\Modules. I don't want it to install itself there but in my own development partition d:\Dev\PowerShellScripts. There's no environment variable that controls this location.
Is there a reason for this or I just don't get it?
Can you explain yourself a bit more.
According to my understanding PowerShell.exe interpreter base directory is the one defined by $env:HOMEDRIVE, $env:HOMEPATH, that can be change using the user profile.
As shown in the screen shots here under :
Edited :
Ok, the screenshot comes from the user property in Active Directory MMC, you've got a simplest one in your windows seven user properties. But this has nothing to do with your problem.
Your problem is around the module installation. The think that you have to know is that Modules can be installed quite everywhere (even on a shared directory with some tricks). By default the environnement variable $env:PSModulePath points to the paths where Get-Module -ListAvailable look for them. So you can add d:\Dev\PowerShellScripts\Modules in this path and then copy the subfolder of C:\Users\Your Name\WindowsPowerShell\Modules created by PoshGit inside your Modules directory and it should work. Modules as opposite to Snapins don't need to be registered.
Now the reason why PoshGit choose to put module in user profile, raser than let you choose the place is PoshGit installer problem.
For more explanations read about Modules and about_environment_variables.

run pydev project from file-system (with imports from different packages)

I want to run my working pydev project python code by double clicking the main module (outside of eclipse): xxx.py
The problem is that due to my imports being in different packages:
from src.apackage.amodule import obj
when xxx.py is double clicked it complains it doesn't know where the imports are (even though when I run xxx.py in pydev it magically knows what I'm importing).
A simple workaround is to remove all of the packages and move all of the modules into one directory (that obviously works but is very inconvenient)
How can I run my code in the file system without doing that work around?
This page answers my question excellently:
http://blog.habnab.it/blog/2013/07/21/python-packages-and-you/
Bottom line is always execute your code from the top, highest level, root directory (e.g. using a minimal main.py file that executes the main script of your program). Then, use absolute imports always and you never have a missing module issue since you start the program from the top directory and all imports are based off that 'home' path.
The problem you encountered is the natural behavior of most languages. A programm only knows about its working path (the path it is started in), the paths which are registered in the environment variables and at least relative paths.
The "magic" of the executable you created is therefore: It collects all scripts/modules needed, and copies/combines them next to/in the executable. The Executable then runs within the directory where all other scripts also reside and voila ...
If you are not happy with your workaround of creating an executable every time you want to run your project without PyDev there are two alternatives.
First but not the one I would suggest is registering the working path into in the environment variables.
Second and the one I think is much better: Create a link to the python executable and alter the calling string of the textfield "Target:". Append the path to your script you would like to run. Then alter the textfield "Start in:" and enter the project directory. After you did this you should be able to start your project with a simple double click.
(If you rely on external libraries which are neither on the path nor in you project you could search for appending paths temporarily to the pythonpath via the sys module.)
I hope I could help a bit.