I have been given this little project to do... There are 1000 computers (thereabouts). Not all on the same network (necesarily). One of the real problems of subdividing this forum is for little problems like this. Because whilst the problem isn't for MSDOS, well its not for any one windows platform, but for all of them. I've been told there are nothing earlier than windows 98 and there are no linux or macs machines. The operating systems are either Windows 98, NT 4.0, 2000 or XP There are no vista machines yet. The mission is this... Every computer box has a station id written on the outside of the box. What i have to do is to visit every computer and record the station id and its IP address. Its that simple. The IP addresses are assigned manually, they do not use DHCP. So initially i thought i would have to type ipconfig <Enter> 1000 or so times, but then i had an idea, why not write a batch file and stick it on a floppy disk. So i wrote something like this ;This is for windows 98 echo off cls ipconfig /all /batch a:\ip.txt ipconfig pause exit The reason why there is the second ipconfig is i probably will have to do the manual record. imagine if the floppy disk corrupts on the last one! Well of course it worked.... for the first one! When i went to a second machine, it simply deleted the file and wrote a new one and of course it didn't enter the station id. This process didn't work at all on the windows 2000 machines, there is no /batch option on the command line. i tried ipconfig /all ->a:\ip.txt but this was rubbish! i haven't tried windows XP or NT4.0 yet. What i would like ideally for the file to do is... i put the floppy in the drive and i click start /run and then i type in a:\ip <Enter> What the batch file ask me for is the station id Enter station id.: and i type it in, say its abcd1234 after typing it in, the ip address info is displayed for me to write down, but it also adds all the IP address one at a time to the same file and then the program exits. So after visiting 3 computers ip.txt will show station id ip adress abcd1234 192.168.0.1 abcd1235 192.168.0.2 xzcf0785 192.168.9.171 for example i can have different batch files for different operating systems and they can even append data to different files, so long as it all works. I would be grateful for any help you can give me, to help me not go mad. I've got one day to try it all out, otherwise its pen and paper only and the long winded ipconfig /all 1000 times. Thank-you

@echo off echo Computer ID: %computername% > %cd%\ip.txt for /f "tokens=15" %%i in ('ipconfig /all ^| find "IP Address"') do echo %%i >> %cd%\ip.txt "Computer security." — Oxymoron

That won't work for the Win9X machines. VBScript coupled with WMI may be a viable option here, but Win98/ME comes with version 1.0, and the MS documentation doesn't do a very good job listing what I can and can't use for that version. That said, you're probably safe with something like this: ipconfig /all >> out.txt echo ************************** >> out.txt

Thank-you Tony for the effort i do appreciate it, and i have kept the code for future use. Unfortunately i may have not made the problem clear enough. Its not the %computername% i need. There is some random station id. written on the outside of the computer box and i need to write that down as well. Station id. ip address abcd1234 192.168.0.1 i also noted that when i took the disk to the next computer and reran the script, it simply over wrote what was already there. So all that it does is write the ip address for one computer, but i have got over a 1000 to do. i also had a go at rewriting my batch file as follows 1. echo off 2. cls 3. ipconfig /all >a:\ip.txt 4. copy a:\ip.txt a:\ip2.txt 5. edit a:\ip2.txt 6. ipconfig 7. pause 8. exit Line 4 is supposed to copy the contents of ip.txt to ip2.txt. The result is that ip2.txt gets overwritten with ip.txt, so it doesn't append to the file. Line 5 is so i could add the station id manually Lines 6 - 8 - i still have to write a manual reocrd, just in case. Can you help further with this? Many thanks

what does the >> do? cos i wrote ipconfig /all >a:\x.txt So i know that > means to ouput to a file. Does >> append to a file? I'm learning a lot thank-you

> = overwrite file >> = append to file

It seems to me that running a batch file from a floppy would take longer than it would to just do it manually. Maybe a USB stick drive would be faster than manual. Also, if 1000 unique IP addresses were assigned to 1000 PC's surely there has to be a record of station ID's and IP's already. Have you talked to the network admins? You may have to resort to bribery. If there is no list then the reason is probably that there is a easy to understand system of assigning IP's (which the admins will tell you about hopefully) perhaps based on the station ID's. And maybe I'm wrong and the place where you work has a seriously improvisational way of setting up networks. And it doesn't make sense that a supervisor would assign you the task if there was an easier way to get the info but even supervisors do some brainless things.