database-tools

PowerShell 5 and later releases come with a cmdlet to automatically add new Windows features, so if you are running a Windows Server and would like...

XPS is a document format similar to PDF from Microsoft. Although it never really was used in a large scale, it can still be a valuable internal...

BOM (Byte Order Mask) is a characteristic byte sequence used in some Unicode encoded text files. If you receive text files with BOM that need to be...

In the previous tip we pointed you to a great compilation of PowerShell cheat sheets. Let’s now check out how easily PowerShell can download...

Here is a great compilation of popular PowerShell cheat sheets, completely free and ready for download:...

Text files can be stored using different encodings, and to correctly reading them, you must specify the encoding. That’s why most cmdlets...

On Windows 10, when you hold CTRL+SHIFT and then move your mouse wheel, you can easily control the transparency of console window, including the...

Here is a one-liner that retrieves your original Windows product key: (Get-WmiObject -Class...

In the previous tip we explained how PowerShell can send PDF documents to the default PDF printer. This generic approach is OK for simple scenarios...

To automatically print PDF documents, unfortunately you cannot use Out-Printer. Out-Printer can only send pure text documents to a printer. However,...

Windows 10 comes with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) feature that you can use to run various Linux distributions. Launch a PowerShell with...

[System.Security.Principal.SecurityIdentifier _i="0" _address="0" theme_builder_area="post_content" /][System.Security.Principal.NTAccount _i="1"...

Here is a one-liner that returns the SID for the current user and can be used in logon scripts, for example:...

Here is a straightforward way to test ports on a local or remote system. You can even specify a timeout (in milliseconds): function Get-PortInfo {...

It can be easy to mess up console colors in the PowerShell console. A single call with accidental values, or a script that messed with the colors,...

Sometimes when you try to access web services (or download internet content in general), PowerShell may bail out and complain about not being able...

Classic foreach loops are the fastest loop available but they come with a severe limitation. Foreach loops do not support streaming. You need to...

There are many ways to create a list of network drives. One involves a COM interface that was used by VBScript as well, and we’ll pick it to...

You can always use Send-MailMessage to send a mail via any SMTP server. If you’d like to use your Outlook client, though, i.e. to keep access...