Supposing I have a number of identical laptops running XP SP2 and I want to
disable the CD ROM or some other device in Device Manager. Is there a way I
can create and run a script which I can run from each machine to do this for
me to same a great deal of time and mouse clicking?

Graham

It may be of interest to note that "Grey" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
message news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Supposing I have a number of identical laptops running XP SP2 and I want
> to
> disable the CD ROM or some other device in Device Manager. Is there a way
> I
> can create and run a script which I can run from each machine to do this
> for
> me to same a great deal of time and mouse clicking?
>
> Graham
>
>

You could do it with 'devcon' (download link halfway down the page)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311272/




--
Jon

Endless Loop: n.,see Loop, Endless.
Loop Endless: n.,see Endless Loop.

"Grey" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Supposing I have a number of identical laptops running XP SP2 and I want
to
> disable the CD ROM or some other device in Device Manager. Is there a way
I
> can create and run a script which I can run from each machine to do this
for
> me to same a great deal of time and mouse clicking?
>
> Graham
>
>

Instead of disabling the CD drive, you could remove its drive letter
with the following 3-line batch file. Note that the third line is very long!

@echo off
set drive=
for /F %%a in ('fsutil fsinfo drives ^| find "\" ^| find /i /v "Drives"') do
fsutil fsinfo DriveType %%a | find /i "CD-ROM" > nul && mountvol %%a /d

You can also make a lot of these changes with a .reg registry patch-file.
See http://ww.theeldergeek.com for info on registry settings.