vba shell command executing but no output

Question

I am having some problems running a shell command and checking the output of the data. I wish to check using vba if the current remote user of the DB is Active. In

command prompt =

for /f "tokens=1-8" %a in ('quser') do @if "%d"== "Active" echo %COMPUTERNAME% %a %d 

returns the users logged on and their state I wish to check that none of them are disconnected ("Disc"). I used this function to check the shell and return the pipe value as a string in a message box

Public Function ShellRun(sCmd As String) As String
'Run a shell command, returning the output as a string'

Dim oShell As Object
Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

'run command'
Dim oExec As Object
Dim oOutput As Object
Set oExec = oShell.Exec(sCmd)
Set oOutput = oExec.StdOut
Debug.Print sCmd

'handle the results as they are written to and read from the StdOut object' 
Dim s As String 
Dim sLine As String 

While Not oOutput.AtEndOfStream
sLine = oOutput.ReadLine
If sLine <> "" Then s = s & sLine & vbCrLf
Wend

ShellRun = s
'example MsgBox ShellRun("cmd.exe /c" & "dir c:\") 
End Function

Call Command used on click event

Dim CMDLineCommand As String 
CMDLineCommand = "for /f ""tokens=1-8"" %a in ('quser') do @if ""%d""== ""Active"" echo %COMPUTERNAME% %a %d" 
'(CMDLineCommand = "dir c:\")<------ THIS WORKS FINE
MsgBox ShellRun("cmd.exe /c " & CMDLineCommand)

This works fine for loads of command line commands I have tested it with but not query and therefore query user. The query user command works fine from command line but does not return anything when issued through a VBA Shell commands.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Answer 1

because shell does not know the path of the query.exe(quesr) it does not continue where as command prompt can use system variables to find exe's. solution find the query.exe and copy it to a working directory then run the shell command. mine was located in a hashed folder within C:\\Windows\\WinSxS be careful as here are 64bit versions and 32 bit.