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Missing Win32_Product

Today I spent some frustrating time debugging a VBScript looking for an authentication problem that didn't exist. I was trying to a install an MSI file on a remote server and kept getting "SWbemServicesEx: A security package specific error occurred." Googling the error only drove me further in the wrong way. Only when I decided to run the script locally on the target computer I realised it wasn't an authentication problem. At least not any more. The error was now "SWbemServicesEx: Not found". I then noticed the Win32_Product class I was using to install the MSI files did not exist. I googled for the error and found lots of people with the same problem but no straightforward solution. Well... it turns out this was not the first time this happened to me... Maybe the next time this happens I google it and find my own blog post with the answer. It's as simple as this: "Add/Remove Programs" "Add/Remove Windows Components" "Management...
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PowerShell: very simple FTP client

One of my first experiments with PowerShell, besides ls and HelloWorld.ps1, was trying the object oriented features and the .Net Framework. I was at the time thinking about a problem I was having with an FTP client I was using and I asked myself: "Would it be possible to make an FTP client with PowerShell?" I knew there was a .Net class that implemented an FTP client so I googled and bit and found it . After reading the examples shown and a little try-and-error, I came up with this extremely simple FTP client in PowerShell below. Note that by "extremely simple" I mean "with very few features and no error detection code". This only gets one file from the FTP server. I probably wouldn't use this in production without a few changes. But it's still a nice example on how to use the .Net framework with PowerShell and this class in particular $localfile = "c:\file.txt" $remotefile = "/folder/file.txt" $ftphost = "ftp://ftpserver...
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Samsung CLP-300

I just bought a colour laser printer from Samsung. The CLP-300. Why the CLP-300? Most of my prints are text documents. From scientific papers to music tablatures and, off course, "how to" articles. I rarely print photos... and I definitely didn't want to buy a relatively good photo printer for a reasonable price and then spend the value of the printer per month in ink cartridges. I might be exaggerating a bit here but you get the idea. Laser printers are usually cheaper per print and therefore a cheap monochromatic laser printer seemed to be a good choice for me. I only had one more problem to solve. I live with my girlfriend and she would be using the printer too. The problem is she loves colours. My plan is ruined... or is it? I started looking for colour laser printers but most of them were very expensive. Much more than the monochromatic models. Enter the CLP-300. It's a small sized (at least for a laser printer), it's low priced and it's relativ...
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