Most of the posts that I have seen about scripting VPN connections refers to scripting the actual connection “settings” but not the “act” of starting the VPN connection.

Scripting the VPN connection to the server requires that you have already gone in on the workstation physically setup the VPN connection. It’s important that you know the full name of the VPN. In your VPN connections area you can verify what the name of the VPN is. In my example the name of VPN is “Fake Company VPN”.

Once you have verified that you have a connection and that it actually connects you can proceed.

We are going to be using the built in command “Raddial”. If we type “rasdial /?” at the command prompt we would get this:

This command should be pretty straight forward. The only thing that might be a bit confusing is that “entryname” should be identical to what ever you called the VPN connection during it’s setup. In my case I called it “Fake Company VPN”. Because the name has spaces in it we MUST use apostrophe’s.

Open “notepad” and enter the information as such. We are going to be using the command “Rasdial” to script the connection to the server. Please fill in the information as it applies to you and the VPN connection.

Save the contents in Notepad as “vpn-connection.bat”. You’re done! You can now use this script in schedule tasks.

Here’s what the connection will look like from the command prompt view.

How sweet is the autocomplete

Do you use the command prompt on a daily basis? If you do, then this tip is definitely for you! I recently found out that there is a way to turn on auto-complete for the command prompt via a simple registry hack. So that means if you are typing in a long path, simply type in the first few letters and then press TAB to auto-complete.

For example, if I am typing in C:\Documents and Settings\, I would just need to type in C:\Doc and then press the TAB key.

As you can see, there is only one option that starts with “doc”, so it’s automatically filled along with quotes since it has spaces in the path! Now that’s pretty neat. I always loved using auto-complete in Windows Explorer or even in Open and Save dialogs, but never knew it could be done in the command prompt also.

You can also browse through the different folders and files in a directory by simply pressing the TAB key. So if you type in C:\ and then keep pressing the tab key, you will be able to cycle through all the folders and files in that path in alphabetical order, i.e. C:\Documents and Settings, C:\Program Files\, etc.

How to enable auto-complete for command prompt

1. Click on Start, then Run and type in regedit
2. Navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor
3. Check to see if you have the following keys in the registry. “CompletionChar” & “PathCompletionChar”.
4. If they aren’t there you are going to need to create two DWORD items and name them “CompletionChar” & “PathCompletionChar”.
5. “CompletionChar” should be a hex value data of 9.
6. “PathCompletionChar” value data should be a HEX value of 40.

Now close regedit and open the command prompt. Start typing in a partial path and then press TAB to auto-complete it! Pretty sweet eh! Great for anyone who has to work with the command prompt a lot. Enjoy!

Second way to turn on auto-complete in the command prompt:

1.) Open a text editor and copy this info into the file.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command Processor]
"CompletionChar"=dword:00000040
"DefaultColor"=dword:00000000
"EnableExtensions"=dword:00000001
"PathCompletionChar"=dword:00000040

2.) Save the file as auto-complete.reg

3.) Close any command windows that are open and then re-open the command prompt.

My favorite “netsh” commands.

Show all interfaces

netsh interface show interface

Enable a Disabled NIC using Command Line

netsh interface set interface "Local Area Connection" enabled

Disable a Enabled NIC using Command Line

netsh interface set interface "Local Area Connection" disabled