Tag Archives: batch file

Force Media Center to Update its Libraries

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KB ID 0000627 

Problem

I use Media Center a lot, and the one thing that bugs me is, every time I add a new film or TV series etc, I have to restart Media Center, restart services, or reboot the entire media PC before I can see them in the list.

After some searching it appears that Media Center uses the same repository/database of media that Windows Media Player uses. There is a convoluted method of stopping services, deleting files and restarting everything that will fix the problem.

However that is a pain, as when I’ve fired up Media Center it’s because I want to watch a film, or listen to some tunes, not start manually messing about with services and deleting cached copies of stuff.

So I wrote a script to do it all for me, and seeing as I couldn’t find one anywhere else, I tarted it up a bit, and made it easy to install. You can launch it from an icon on your desktop, it will stop Media Center, flush the cache, then restart Media Center for you.

Solution

1. First download this zip file and extract the contents to your desktop.

2. From within the ‘Refresh Media Library’ folder double click the install.bat file (this will copy the needed files to your “Program Files” folder and drop the shortcut on your desktop).

3. Whenever you want to update the Media Center Library simply run the script form the shortcut on your desktop.

4. After it’s completed it will launch Media Center for you. Once installed you can safely delete the ‘Refresh Media Library’ folder.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

How to Play .MKV files in Media Center

GNS3 – Network Cards Are Missing

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KB ID 0000964 

Problem

Like most techies, I am always fiddling with things. One of my mottoes is “If you never break anything, you never learn how to fix things”. So after messing around with the networks in VMware Workstation (What I typically use for connecting GNS3 to either real machines, or the outside world). I lost the network connections in GNS3 and could not get them back. Seems like any new NICs that you add are not listed either.

Solution

Note: It might be worth resetting your VMware Workstation Network settings before continuing. (Edit > Virtual Network Editor > Restore default).

1. To make things simple, I’ve renamed the Network Cards installed by VMware workstation to something a little more descriptive, (if you unsure which is which, just run ‘ipconfig’).

2. Let’s double check, drop to command line and run the following command;

[box]
netsh interface ipv4 show interfaces
[/box]

3. And let’s affirm what GNS3 is telling us by running the following script from the GNS3 directory;

[box]
“C:Program FilesGNS3network-device-list.cmd”[/box]

LEAVE THIS WINDOW OPEN

4. As you can see (above) there is a discrepancy. To get GNS3 to ‘sync’ with windows we need to restart the NetGroup Packet Filter Driver service. Open an elevated command prompt and issue the following commands;

[box]

net stop npf
net start n/f

[/box]

5. Now execute the script again and it should show the correct network adapters.

6. Now from within GNS3 you can add the correct network cards to your ‘Clouds’.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

NA

Chrome/Firefox – Open Multiple Tabs from Command/Batch File

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KB ID 0000713 

Problem

I know all modern browsers can open multiple ‘Home Pages’ at startup, but that’s not what I wanted. There are a few tech sites that I visit once a day, and they are all in my bookmarks. I tediously click each one to visit these sites. So I thought ‘There must be a way of opening all these sites, at once, from a batch file or a single command?”

I use Chrome as my browser of choice, so I worked out how to do it, then I thought “I wonder if Firefox will do the same?” (it will). Finally for completeness I thought I would do the same for Internet Explorer, and lost the will to live! (That’s why it’s not included in this article).

Solution

Open Multiple Sites in Chrome from command.

The command is as follows;

[box]”C:Program Files (x86)GoogleChromeApplicationchrome.exe” “http://www.petenetlive.com/” “http://www.it-ps.com/” “http://www.microsoft.com/” “http://www.vmware.com/” “http://www.cisco.com/”[/box]

For older versions of Chrome, the path to chrome.exe is different.

[box]%userprofile%AppDataLocalGoogleChromeApplicationchrome.exe “http://www.petenetlive.com/” “http://www.it-ps.com/” “http://www.microsoft.com/” “http://www.vmware.com/” “http://www.cisco.com/”[/box]

Simply keep adding URL’s in quotes for extra tabs.

Open Multiple Sites in Firefox from command.

The command is as follows;

[box]”%programfiles(x86)%Mozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe” “http://www.petenetlive.com/” “http://www.it-ps.com/” “http://www.microsoft.com/” “http://www.vmware.com/” “http://www.cisco.com/”[/box]

Simply keep adding URL’s in quotes for extra tabs.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

Original article written 15/11/12