Hello everyone!

I'm working for a tech company that sells and services computers. We do a lot of routine maintenance on our customer's computers and jetcompact happens to be one of them. My job is to find out ways to make our maintenance more automated with less human interactions. I've scoured the internet for ways to automate JetCompact but only found links to the download center on Microsoft's website. At this point I'm not even sure that it is even possible to automate this utility. Can anyone enlighten this subject? Maybe even provide an alternative to it? I hope to use Powershell or Batch files to accomplish this.

Thanks ahead of time,

Sam

I downloaded the Jetcomp utility to my Desktop (it was zipped) and from a PowerShell console ran C:\users\username\Desktop\jetcu40.exe /? and it listed a few command line switches that you can use to automate its installation.

I then open the utility with 7-zip and dragged the executable to my Desktop. I then ran C:\users\username\Desktop\jectcomp.exe /? from the PowerShell console and was presented with a huge list of command line switches. I have never heard of this utility before day, but perhaps you can combine some of these switches with PowerShell, VBS, or batch files. Here's how you could incorporate PowerShell with my command above to see if the executable had any command line switches.

Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock {C:\users\username\Desktop\jetcomp.exe /?}

You could use these same steps to use the utility as well.

Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock {C:\users\username\Desktop\jetcomp.exe -src:"C:\InputDB.mdb" -dest:"C:\OutputDB.mdb"}

These command line switches will allow you to use the utility without using the graphical front-end. Best of luck!

Edit: I corrected a couple of the paths.

• Proposed as answer by jrv Friday, March 07, 2014 10:21 PM
• Edited by tommymaynard Saturday, March 08, 2014 4:16 AM
• Marked as answer by Bill_StewartModerator Saturday, May 17, 2014 3:54 AM

Out of curiosity, why are you using Invoke-Command here instead of just calling the executable directly?  For example:

C:\users\username\Desktop\jetcomp.exe -src:"C:\InputDB.mdb" -dest:"C:\OutputDB.mdb"

Dave - I get that it doesn't get him anything more when run against the local computer, but perhaps it can be that turning point where he gets a greater interest in PowerShell and what the cmdlet can really do. I wasn't going to wrap the executable in the Invoke-Command cmdlet at first and then figured, why not? He asked about PowerShell. For me, I didn't always remember things the first time, but as I got more and more exposure I started to recognize cmdlets and was grateful I had seen them before - this still happens.

Mildly off-topic, but congrats on the mentions from Don Jones in that recent PowerScripting Podcast.

Sam - In the future you may want to explore PSRemoting and the built-in ability of the Invoke-Command cmdlet to run against remote computers. If PSRemoting was set up and the jetcomp.exe was on a remote computer(s) you could use the cmdlet with the -ComputerName parameter to run it and return the results back to you. You could even run a command prior to the Invoke-Command cmdlet to copy the executable to the remote computer first, if it wasn't already there. And before that you could test that the computer was online. Great stuff and all possible with PowerShell.

Thank you so much for the information! I was interested in PowerShell only because I took a 6-week course on it (currently working on my MCSE:Messaging cert and PS was one of the courses) and my workplace only started requiring the whole automation thing. And as for the PSRemoting feature, we've only touched on it during the course and I can definitely see us working with it fairly soon. I'll do little more digging about that through google before asking silly questions here on the forums. But either way, getting completely different responses from the two of you really helps a lot! More than what google could have offered!

Thanks again!

Sam

Question on this: will this command work if the database is in use by anothe

Question on this: will this command work if the database is in use by another station?

1. This question is already marked as answered.

2. Try it, and you will find out the answer to your own question.