Powershell

In the previous tip we added considerable speed to a common script pattern. Now, let’s squeeze out even more performance with a pretty unusual...

Here is a common mistake found in many PowerShell scripts: $start = Get-Date $bucket = @() 1..100000 | ForEach-Object { $bucket += "I am adding...

Here is a chunk of code that demonstrates how you can store private settings in the Windows Registry: # store settings here $Path =...

If you use Outlook to organize your calendar events, here is a useful PowerShell function that connects to Outlook and dumps your calendar entries:...

How would you query for all AD users with names that start with a “e”-“g”? You shouldn’t use a client-side filter such...

Maybe you’d like to add a column with incrementing indices to your objects. Try this: $startcount = 0 Get-Service | Select-Object -Property...

In the previous tip we explained what Group-Object can do for you, and how awesome it is. Unfortunately, Group-Object does not scale well. When you...

Group-Object is an awesome cmdlet: it can easily visualize distributions. Check out the examples below: Get-Process | Group-Object -Property Company...

Occasionally, there is the need to automate tasks on websites that have been opened manually. Maybe you need to log into internal web pages first...

Starting with Windows 8 and Server 2012 R2, these operating systems ship a PowerShell module called PrintManagement. The cmdlets found in this...

Sometimes it may be clever to use simple text-based CSV format internally to bulk-create objects, especially if the original data is already...

Often, AD Administrators need to find all members of a given AD group, including nested members. Here is a code snippet that frequently surfaces in...

The cloud these days not only offers virtual machines and storage, but also brand new and exciting services such as the cognitive services. You need...

PowerShell 5 finally includes support for ZIP files, so if you want to backup all of your PowerShell scripts into one ZIP file, here is a one-liner:...

Local admin privileges are extremely powerful, and you should use techniques such as JEA to minimize the number of local Admins as much as you can....

By default, script block logging data is open to anyone, not just Administrators. When script block logging is enabled, any user can access the log...

In the previous tips, we took a deep look at how PowerShell 5 script block logging works: in a nutshell, when enabled, all PowerShell code that...

Some scripts may leave variables with sensitive information behind. This can happen by accident, when the global scope is used, or when users call...

Here is a super easy and useful PowerShell function called Out-HTML: function Out-HTML { param ( [String] $Path = "$env:temp\report$(Get-Date...

Frequently, PowerShell functions work with sensitive information, i.e. log-on information including passwords, and store this information in...

Credentials are objects that contain a user name and an encrypted password. If your PowerShell functions should be able to accept credentials,...

Ever wanted to know the original URL behind network drives? Here is an easy PowerShell way: # make sure the below drive is a mapped network drive #...

Downloading very large files can be a challenge because the download process may take longer than a machine is turned on. With BitsTransfer, you can...

A very convenient built-in way to download files, even with SSL connections, is Start-BitsTransfer. It also sports a progress bar that shows the...

Invoke-WebRequest can download files for you but may struggle with HTTPS URLs. To use SSL connections, you may have to change a default setting....

Here is a quick one-liner that dumps all Group Policy objects that have all settings disabled: Get-Gpo -All | Where-Object GpoStatus -eq...

Get-EventLog always requires you to specify exactly one event log via -LogName. You cannot use wildcards, and you cannot browse all event logs at...

You probably have used Get-EventLog frequently to dump event log information, for example: PS> Get-EventLog -LogName System -EntryType Error...

The PowerShell console starting in version 5 ships with a module called PSReadLine which does much more than just coloring command tokens. It comes...

PowerShell 6 (PowerShell Core) finally ships with SSH support: you can use SSH to connect to non-Windows machines for PowerShell remoting...