database-tools

In PowerShell, the variable "$_" has special importance. It works like a placeholder in scenarios like this one: PS> Get-ChildItem...

If a console application or script has changed the console colors and you want to reset them to the default colors defined in your console...

Script blocks are dynamic by default, so variables in a script block will be evaluated each time the script block runs. By turning a script block in...

There are plenty of useful console commands such as ipconfig, whoami, and systeminfo. Most of these commands hide inside the Windows folder....

In a previous tip we explained how you can use slmgr, a built-in VBScript, to check Windows licensing state. The core information used by this...

Sometimes it isn't easy to call a command-line tool with some arguments. The PowerShell parser may interfere, and your call may even return...

To automatically manage Windows license keys, use slmgr which is a VBScript that you can call from PowerShell. Just make sure that cscript.exe is...

Unfortunately, there is no built-in cmdlet to unzip files. There are plenty of 3rd party tools, many of which are free. If you cannot use these...

PowerShell v3 comes with a hugely useful new cmdlet called Invoke-WebRequest. You can use it to interact with websites which also includes...

In PowerShell v2, if command names started with a number, you had to use the call operator "&": PS> & 7z In PowerShell v3, this...

In some of our previous tips, we showed how you can turn comma-separated data returned from different console tools into rich PowerShell objects....

If you want to permanently delete a digital certificate in your certificate store, here is how. This line lists all your personal certificates:...

Many console-based tools like driverquery, whoami, or tasklist provide useful information but the column names are localized and may differ,...

Get-Process returns a lot of information about running tasks but it does not return the process owners or the session a process is logged on to....

In PowerShell v2, to declare a function parameter as mandatory, you would decorate the parameter like this: param( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)] $p )...

To find out the groups your account belongs to, there is a command line tool called whoami. This tool supports options to output the information as...

PowerShell v3 comes without help files. To get help, you need to download the help files first. In an elevated PowerShell console, use this command:...

Whenever you use Invoke-Command to remotely execute code, you will notice that PowerShell automatically adds the column PSComputerName to your...

There is a not widely known COM object that you can use to list all the installed Windows Updates on a machine. Here is the code: $Session =...

Assume your function wanted to know whether it is the last element in a pipeline or operating in the middle of it. Here is a way for a function to...