database-tools

Windows maintains a log file named cbs.log in $env:windir\logs\cbs. It logs various pieces of information related to the Windows trusted installer,...

In a previous tip you learned that there may be gigabytes worth of log file CAB files. Today, let’s try and have PowerShell do the cleanup....

When you run a Windows box for a couple of months or even years, a lot of disk space can be wasted by backed up log files that are not needed. So if...

In a previous tip you learned how to check for left-over files in both your own temp folder and the one maintained by Windows. Today, let’s...

This week is cleaning week, and we’ll show you tactics how you can potentially retrieve gigabytes of disk space, especially with machines that...

If you’d like to access any of the following special locations, then we have good news for you: PS C:\>...

You can use PowerShell remoting to transfer files across a network – this is new in PowerShell 5.0. This can be useful in closed environments...

Check out this simple way of creating temporary passwords: -join...

In the previous tip we illustrated how you can ask WMI for the last reboot time of a machine. A more robust way is to query the Windows event logs....

These days, computers hibernate or go into standby but do not really reboot that often anymore. To find out when your computer rebooted the last...

Tracert.exe tells you the hops your data packages need to take to get to a given host. Here is an example: PS C:\> tracert www.microsoft.com...

Sometimes, commands and methods do not return exactly what you are after. If you, for example, wanted to get the assigned IP addresses for a...

There is no module available for all PowerShell versions that allows to administer local user accounts. Here is a chunk of sample code that...

Frequently, loops are used to retrieve (or generate) data, then save it to a variable. There can be tremendous performance differences though. To...

Ever wanted to know who are the three worst sources for errors in your System event log? Here is a simple approach that yields the source names with...

PowerShell can turn fixed-width tabular data easily into rich objects. First, define the column widths. Then, have PowerShell inject a delimiter at...

With Select-Object, you typically include the object properties you want to receive. You can do it the other way around, too, though. Here is an...

A good temporary password should be complex, yet unambiguous. So it should contain a mixture of upper and lower case plus special characters, but it...

Your colleague went to lunch again without properly locking his computer? Then this is your chance to run this code on his PowerShell: $powershell =...

In the previous tip we explained why functions can have multiple return values, and that anything you leave behind will be added to the return...