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Start and stop windows services with powershell scripts

With Powershell you can easily start or stop specific windows services depending on current status. An example is starting the VMWare Services only if they are currently stopped. The command

get-service

list all windows service with their status, short – and display name. Create a new File startVMWare.ps1 and paste the following

foreach ($svc in Get-Service){
  if(($svc.displayname.StartsWith("VMware")) -AND ($svc.Status -eq "Stopped")) {
    echo $svc.DisplayName
    Start-Service $svc.name
  }
}

Sign the script as shown in my previous post to run self signed scripts. Run the script in an powershell with administrator rights.

.\startVMWare.ps1

The script starts only stopped VMWare services. To run this script directly you can write a small dos file startVMWare.cmd with the following content

powershell -file <FULL PATH TO YOUR SCRIPT>\startVMWare.ps1

Start the Dos file with right click and admin rights to execute the vmware start powershell script.

First experiences with windows 7 rc

The good news is that most of the common used software works. So far i install only the necessary software for such a netbook. No video editing, development tools, ide,…

Software which works

Flash under IE8 work only with a trick. The direct download or installation from adobe.com does not work. Via PCWelt is the install exe as well available. Save the file and start the installation. Et voila.

The Samsung has no built in bluetooth device. I bought a ultra small usb Trust bluetooth 2.1 adapter. Windows 7 RC recognize most but not all functionality. The broadcom driver for Vista works perfect. After that i can install the Nokia PC Suite 7.1 and access my Nokia N95 successfully.

Windows 7 RC on Samsung NC10

The Samsung netbook shipped with pre installed Windows XP and 1GB RAM. After upgrading to 2GB RAM and good tests of Windows 7 RC under Virtualbox and VMware i feel safe to install Windows 7 RC. I made under the running XP all available updates including bios firmware. My RAM dealer told me about a other customer with non bootable netbook after upgrading under windows 7. You need a USB Stick to extract the iso to it and boot from it like described here. Reboot the netbook and press F2 to enter the BIOS for changing the boot order. Push the “USB HDD” over the internal HDD and press F10 for “save and exit”. Insert the stick and enter the setup of windows 7 RC. The installation works perfect and nearly all hardware works out of the box. Windows update updates the lan,wlan and graphics driver. My netbook has a built in UTMS modem which is not recognized out of the box. Under XP are two possibility to establish HSPDA connections with the internal UMTS modem: Vodafone Dashboard or the Samsung Connectionmanager. I tried from samsung.de the XP version with no luck. The polish Samsung website has a newer working version. Another problem was the touchpad. Windows recognize only a PS/2 mouse… The vista driver from the synaptic download site works well. Good first place to look is the “troubleshoot compatibility” entry in context menu of each executeable. Set their the requirement to use Admin rights and Vista or XP (in that order) compatibility. The connectionmanager works only with Vista OS and Admin rights settings. WLAN at home was no problem. No jumps or quirks has to be done to establish a WPA2 AES connection.

I use AVG Antivir Free edition as antivirus solution. The newly maintenance center offers online a page with working products. Microsoft links directly to AVG Antivirus. AVG Antivir Free works as well with the limitation that windows is not informed about the state of virus definitions. You can disable this additional check inside the maintenance center to avoid further warnings about a maybe outdated antivirus solution. I tried inside Virtualbox Kapersky as trial which has a perfect integration.

Windows 7 RC compared to Vista is much faster. Even on a netbook will the Aero extension work. Other programs or windows get a glass l&f if you swith with the tab key through the runnning programs. The taskbar shows the running IE 8 including the possibility to navigate directly to the open tabs. Download progress is shown as a green filling taskbar icon.

Most software seems to run like Office 2003, Notepad++, 7-Zip or firefox.

Overall is the Samsung NC10 a good choice as netbook with the non glare display and the long running battery with 3-4h capicity.