Vincent Fatica has released SETENV.EXE

SETENV.EXE offers greater functionality than the ResKit's command-line utility SETX.EXE in viewing and manipulating the Windows NT "master" environment. For background on Windows NT / Windows 2000 environmental variables, read Q100843.

SETENV syntax:
 To set or change the value of a variable:
 
        User environment:        setenv -u name value        (also /u)
        Machine environment:     setenv -m name value        (also /m)

 Default user environment        setenv -d name value        (also /d)
     Volatile environment:       setenv -v name value        (also /v)
     To display a variable:      setenv -u|-m|-d|-v name
     To delete a variable:       setenv -u|-m|-d|-v name -delete   (also /delete)
     To display an environment:  setenv -u|-m|-d|-v
 
 Use double-quotes around values containing spaces.
 If a variable name or value is to CONTAIN a double-quote, escape that double-quote as \"
 Return codes: 0 = success,        1 = variable not found,
               2 = access denied,  3 = other error
               4 = SETENV has shown this syntax message
 Requested output goes to STDOUT; help and error messages to STDERR.

By accessing either HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment , that is the "user" or "machine" environment. SETENV.EXE will display an entire environment or the value of a single variable, set or change the value of a single variable, or delete a variable. Upon successfully making changes to an environment, SETENV calls RegFlushKey to ensure that the changes are written to disk immediately, and then calls BroadcastSystemMessage to inform all (interested) components that a change to the environment has been made. EXPLORER (and not many other programs) acts on this message by updating its environment. BroadcastSystemMessage is an improvement over SendMessageTimeout which is apparently used by SETX as well as the MyComputer\Properties\Environment page; SendMessageTimeout can fail if EXPLORER is running as a separate process from the TaskBar/Desktop (see the Knowledge Base's Q104011) and, at the moment, has no windows open to process the message. SETENV's syntax message (which will be displayed if an otherwise invalid syntax is used) appears below. Get SETENV.EXE by anonymous FTP. Vincent Fatica modified SETENV.EXE to create (and set) variables as type REG_EXPAND_SZ whenever at least two occurrences of "%" are found in the value string (this is a good indication that some expansion is intended); otherwise, the type REG_SZ is used. For variables of type REG_EXPAND_SZ, references within a variable to another environment variable will be expanded upon use. To set a variable containing a reference to another variable, you must tell CMD.EXE not to expand the name of the referenced variable before sending the command line to SETENV; do this as follows (for example):

setenv -u foo "%"userprofile"%"

With the 4NT.EXE command interpreter, use:

setenv -u foo %%userprofile%%

The variable "foo" will be set to "%userprofile%", and when referenced, will return whatever is the value of the variable "userprofile". *More recently (8/5/98) Vincent Fatica added support (-v) for NT's "volatile" environment, which is stored in "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Volatile Environment". This is also part of the environment which Explorer gives to applications. The variables and values in the volatile environment do not survive logouts and reboots, and are not propagated by the operating system. The new option tests OK, including when SETENV is called from a login script.

*Even more recently (12/19/98) Vincent Fatica added support (-d) for the HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Environment key

Tim Hill's text on command line scripting is outstanding. If you have an extensive background, writing bat files, forget it. Otherwise, get it.

Windows scripting host is a different animal entirely to batchfile-like scripts. Much more powerful. Native scripting language for NT2000 but available for NT4. Start studying now. Includes builtin support for vbscript & jscript with addins available for perl and other scripting languages. Extraordinary powerful and subsequently it can be very complex.