Vincent Fatica has released SETENV.EXE
SETENV.EXE offers greater functionality than the
ResKit’s command-line utility SETX.EXE in viewing and manipulating the Windows
NT “master” environment. For background on Windows NT / Windows 2000
environmental variables, read Q100843. SETENV syntax:
To set or change the value of a variable:
User environment: setenv -u name value (also /u)
Machine environment: setenv -m name value (also /m)
Default user environment setenv -d name value (also /d)
Volatile environment: setenv -v name value (also /v)
To display a variable: setenv -u|-m|-d|-v name
To delete a variable: setenv -u|-m|-d|-v name -delete (also /delete)
To display an environment: setenv -u|-m|-d|-v
Use double-quotes around values containing spaces.
If a variable name or value is to CONTAIN a double-quote, escape that double-quote as \”
Return codes: 0 = success, 1 = variable not found,
2 = access denied, 3 = other error
4 = SETENV has shown this syntax message
Requested output goes to STDOUT; help and error messages to STDERR.
By accessing either HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment
or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session
Manager\Environment , that is the “user” or “machine” environment.
SETENV.EXE will display an entire environment or the
value of a single variable, set or change the value of a single variable, or
delete a variable. Upon successfully making changes to an environment, SETENV
calls RegFlushKey to ensure that the changes are
written to disk immediately, and then calls BroadcastSystemMessage to inform all (interested) components
that a change to the environment has been made. EXPLORER (and not many other
programs) acts on this message by updating its environment. BroadcastSystemMessage is an improvement over SendMessageTimeout which is apparently used by SETX as well
as the MyComputer\Properties\Environment page; SendMessageTimeout can fail if EXPLORER is running as a
separate process from the TaskBar/Desktop (see the Knowledge Base’s Q104011)
and, at the moment, has no windows open to process the message. SETENV’s syntax
message (which will be displayed if an otherwise invalid syntax is used) appears
below. Get SETENV.EXE by anonymous FTP. Vincent Fatica modified SETENV.EXE to
create (and set) variables as type REG_EXPAND_SZ whenever at least two
occurrences of “%” are found in the value string (this is a good indication that
some expansion is intended); otherwise, the type REG_SZ is used. For variables
of type REG_EXPAND_SZ, references within a variable to another environment
variable will be expanded upon use. To set a variable containing a reference to
another variable, you must tell CMD.EXE not to expand the name of the referenced
variable before sending the command line to SETENV; do this as follows (for
example):
setenv -u foo “%”userprofile”%”
With the 4NT.EXE command interpreter, use:
setenv -u foo %%userprofile%%
The variable “foo” will be set to “%userprofile%”, and when referenced, will
return whatever is the value of the variable “userprofile”. *More recently
(8/5/98) Vincent Fatica added support (-v) for NT’s “volatile” environment,
which is stored in “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Volatile Environment”. This is also part
of the environment which Explorer gives to applications. The variables and
values in the volatile environment do not survive logouts and reboots, and are
not propagated by the operating system. The new option tests OK, including when
SETENV is called from a login script.
*Even more recently (12/19/98) Vincent Fatica added support (-d) for the
HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Environment key
