database-tools

There are numerous ways to find out if a script runs elevated. Here's a pretty simple approach: PS> (whoami /all | Select-String...

whoami.exe is a useful little tool that ships with Windows 7/Server 2008 R2, and it becomes even more useful when you instruct it to output its...

Paths can be relative, such as ". \file.txt". To resolve such a path and display its full path, you could use Resolve-Path: PS>...

PowerShell allows its own current path to differ from what Windows thinks is the current path: [IO.Path]::GetFullPath('.') cd $env:windir...

To find out how much time a particular cmdlet or command takes, here's a handy little stopwatch that you can use: function Test { $codetext =...

Maybe you want to design a script that takes code as user input. How would you run that submitted piece of code and pass parameters to it? To run a...

The integrated PowerShell ISE editor has its own icon and can be pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar, just like PowerShell. Try this: Open PowerShell,...

If you have pinned PowerShell to your taskbar (on Windows 7: launch PowerShell, right-click its icon in the task bar, choose "Pin this program...

If you have set Windows Update to automatic mode, it takes care of detecting, downloading, and installing all necessary updates - fine. However, it...

In a previous tip we showed how you can hide drive letters in Windows Explorer. You may have discovered, though, that a user can still open files...

Sometimes you need full administrator privileges to debug or test a script in the ISE script editor. By default, ISE starts with restricted...

PowerShell v3 Beta is available for quite some time now, so every now and then we start tossing in some PowerShell v3 tips. We'll clearly mark...

Sometimes you may want to hide drive letters in Windows Explorer from users. There's a Registry key that can do this for you. It takes a bit...

Sometimes, you may need to turn characters such as drive letters into numbers or even bit masks. With a little bit of math, this is easily doable....

Whenever you download something with IE, by default the files get stored in your personal download folder. Often, over time a lot of garbage can...

In a previous tip we showed how you can use the BITS service to copy files. The main advantage of BITS is that it can copy things silently in the...

Supplying parameters to a cmdet often results in very long lines like this one: Get-ChildItem -Path $env:windir -Filter *.ps1 -Recurse -ErrorAction...

You can use Copy-Item or the console applications xcopy and robocopy to copy large files. But did you know that you can also use the BITS service to...

Asterisk serve as wildcards, so how would you check for the presence of an asterisk? It's much harder than you might think: PS>...

If you'd like to add a path to the %PATH% environment variable, that's easy: PS> $env:path += '

With Get-WinEvent you can access the various Windows log files such as this one: PS> Get-WinEvent Microsoft-Windows-WinRM/Operational There is no...

Maybe you'd like to include dynamic information such as the current time into the title bar of your PowerShell console. You could update the...