Help with Shell

[Don Wells]

The following Command line works as expected
    systeminfo |find "Time Zone" > c:\trash\data.txt

I have attempted to achieve the same results with the following VBA code which I derived from here in the post by 'Billy Yao [MSFT]' dated 28th Jan 2004:

Code: Select all

Option Explicit

Public Sub dos()
Dim MyCommand As String
Dim TaskId As Long

  MyCommand = "cmd /c systeminfo | ""Time Zone"" > c:\Trash\data.txt"
  TaskId = Shell(MyCommand, 1)

End Sub

Please point out the errors in my code.

Many thanks in advance.

[Rudi]

Try this:

Code: Select all

Public Sub dos()
Dim MyCommand As String
Dim TaskId As Long

  MyCommand = "cmd /c systeminfo |find ""Time Zone"" > c:\data.txt"
  TaskId = Shell(MyCommand, 1)

End Sub

[Don Wells]

    After a great deal of effort I have been unable to capture the System Time Zone using the Shell command. It is my belief that the problem stems from the manner in which the command prompt handles quotation marks when they enclose a pipe, coupled with the command line including a VBA Class Member (Time).

    I have developed a work-around (with its own problems) presented here, but would deeply appreciate guidance on extracting the system time zone using the Shell command.

[HansV]

The code posted by Rudi works for me if I change the path - recent versions of Windows don't like users saving files in the root of C:\. So try C:\Temp\data,txt or similar.
I have attached the result I got from running the code. Note that there is no indication of DST/Summer Time (my time zone is UTC+1, but with Summer Time it's currently UTC+2)'

data.txt

[Don Wells]

Thank you Rudi and Hans.

[Rudi]

When I was experimenting with your query, I changed your original path to write directly to the C:\ drive as I was too lazy to create a 'Trash' folder on C:\. I forgot to change it back to your original path before I posted. Similar to Hans, the code I posted worked every time for me too.

[Don Wells]

If anyone should happen to stumble upon this thread in search of code to return the system Time Zone, I would recommend they use the code developed by Chip Pearson which is available here. It is orders of magnitude faster than that previously shown in this thread.

[HansV]

Thanks for the tip!