Michael Mishler

Books
For batch file programming, Tim Hill's NT Shell Scripting is *the* book.  His
Windows Script Host book is also good (both are from what was formerly known as
Macmillan Technical Publishing.

Forums
For online resources, the very best is generally the
microsoft.public.scripting.wsh newsgroup.  The
microsoft.public.scripting.VBScript group is higher traffic and has lots of
spillover.  When I first started using the NGs, I put a watch on Michael Harris
and Torgeir Bakken in particular since they post so much quality stuff which can
be immediately used by newcomers.  You will find *several* other high-quality
responders over there, whose names I won't mention since I will probably forget
some.  Also there are regular drivebys by "celebrity" scripter.(Really, there is
such a thing).

Sites for Raw Material
http://cwashington.netreach.net has most of the good stuff.  You can find bits
and pieces of things elsewhere, but most places have exceedingly poor quality
control.

Sites for Ideas, Tips, Interaction
check out:
http://communities.msn.com/WindowsScript
One of the "big" names in scripting, Ian Morrish, is the originator of this
community.  It's lower traffic than the newsgroups (no surprise, they're *busy*)
and rather "homey".  Lots of organized snippets of info and specialty script
pieces are provided in the community boards.  I consider myself to be a superior
scripter and I keep finding new things over there.

Things You Need To Get

Get the latest version of WSH; it is officially not supported on Win95, but it
appears to work even there.  Note that XP comes with this, and Win2K clients
take a different version from the other Windows clients.  Watch for a wrapping
URL below:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/sample.asp?url=/MSDN-FILES/027/00...
ompositedoc.xml

Get the WSH 5.6 docs:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/winscript56/Install/5.6/W982KM...
crdoc56en.exe

--
torgeir