JSI Tip 9875. How can I send a pop-up message to every available computer in my domain, even if the messenger service is disabled?

Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 contains MSG.EXE, a command-line tool to send a message to a user.

When you type MSG /?, you receive:

Send a message to a user.MSG {username | sessionname | sessionid | @filename | *}    [/SERVER:servername] [/TIME:seconds] [/V] [/W] [message]  username            Identifies the specified username.  sessionname         The name of the session.  sessionid           The ID of the session.  @filename           Identifies a file containing a list of usernames,                      sessionnames, and sessionids to send the message to.  *                   Send message to all sessions on specified server.  /SERVER:servername  server to contact (default is current).  /TIME:seconds       Time delay to wait for receiver to acknowledge msg.  /V                  Display information about actions being performed.  /W                  Wait for response from user, useful with /V.  message             Message to send.  If none specified, prompts for it                      or reads from stdin.

Using only standard commands, and sub-routines that use only standard commands, I have scripted SendMsg.bat to send a message to every available computer in the domain that you are logged into.

The syntax for using SendMsg.bat is:

SendMsg "Message"

Where Message is the text that you wish to send.

NOTE: SendMsg.bat uses CMPAvail.bat and ADComp.bat, which must be located in your PATH, or in the same folder as SendMsg.bat.

SendMsg.bat contains:

@echo offif {%1}=={} @echo Syntax: SendMsg "Message"&goto :EOFif {%2} NEQ {} @echo Syntax: SendMsg "Message"&goto :EOFsetlocal ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSIONset message=%1set message=%message:"=%for /f "Tokens=1 Delims=;" %%a in ('call adcomp') do ( set comp="%%a" call CMPAvail !comp! Status if "!Status!" EQU "Y" msg * /server:!comp! %message%)endlocal