database-tools

When you use the ADSISearcher type accelerator to find Active Directory accounts, it defaults to the current domain you are logged on to. If you...

A "DN" (Distinguished Name) is the path to an Active Directory object and could look similar to this:...

Active Directory accounts contain the SID in binary form. To convert the byte array into a string representation, use a .NET function like this: #...

Beginning in PowerShell 3.0, there is a very easy way of determining the folder a script is located in: $PSScriptRoot. This variable always holds...

In a previous script you have discovered how easy it is to find Active Directory accounts with just some simple PowerShell code. The result is a...

There are modules and cmdlets to deal with Active Directory tasks, but sometimes it is easier and faster to simply use some .NET code instead. If...

Imagine you have worked long hours on a script in the ISE editor. While you worked on it, you probably have defined variables, created functions,...

Get-Command can be used to find cmdlets, but in PowerShell 3.0 it will often return many more cmdlets than expected. Due to module auto-loading,...

The PowerShell ISE editor is great for copying and pasting code, for example to Microsoft Word and other text processors. Since ISE formats the...

Here's a code snippet that creates DateTime ranges. Just specify a year and a month, and the script produces a DateTime object for each day in...

Frequently, you will have PowerShell retrieve data, and then you pick parts of the information and use it in reports. Like here: $serial =...

Ever had the need to store a password in a script? Ever needed to automate a credential dialog? First: storing passwords and other confidential...

If your partner is as geeky as you, he or she may enjoy a private message in hex encoding. Everyone else may at least enjoy the technology used...

WMI is a treasure chest full of information. This line will read local partitions along with their block sizes: Get-WmiObject -Class...

When you export Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to CSV files, Excel by default saves CSV files in ANSI encoding. That's bad because special...

Sometimes it can get confusing which startup scripts run when PowerShell starts. There can be plenty, and they may be different, depending on...

There are many ways to create custom objects. Here's a creative solution that can be useful in many scenarios: create a text-based...

With an increasing number of PowerShell scripts on your hard drive, it can become hard to find the script you are looking for. Here's a helper...

If your display driver supports WMI, then you can change the display brightness using PowerShell - event on remote machines! Here's the...

If you want to check your current display brightness (preferably on notebooks, of course), here's a quick function: function...

Symbolic links work very similar to "regular" link files (*.lnk): they can point to virtually any file or folder and even UNC paths....

To test whether a script is run by an Administrator with full privileges (UAC elevated), here is an unusual approach that illustrates the enormous...

Hard links are file "phantoms" in the NTFS file system. They make one file visible in multiple file system locations (within one volume)....

PowerShell can easily read and write to the Registry, the central store for Windows settings. Here's a function that can turn the display of...

To add on-demand verbose output to your PowerShell functions, make sure your functions support the common parameters by adding the CmdletBinding...

To easily copy cmdlet results to other applications, simply pipe them to clip.exe. Next, paste the results into whatever application you want:...

Finally, in PowerShell 3.0, Out-GridView can turn into a versatile selection dialog - just add the new parameter -PassThru and watch: $Title =...

If you use PowerShell 3.0 and the ISE editor, then here are the three most useful tricks you should know: 1. Press CTRL+J to open a list of...

You can always pipe objects to Out-GridView and get a nice extra window with all of the object properties lined up as table. That's useful if...

If you are into writing long and complex PowerShell code with a lot of functions, then this one is for you. In other development environments, when...