Powershell

Beginning in PowerShell 5, the PowerShell console features colorized text, and there is a wealth of other new features provided by a module named...

By converting a path to a FileInfo object, you can easily determine the path parent folder or file extension. Have a look:...

Often, code needs to check on files, and for example test whether the file exists or exceeds a given size. Here is some commonly used code: $logFile...

Beginning in PowerShell 5, you can use Start-Transcript in any host to log all the output created by your script. Here is how you can easily add...

On Windows 10, the operating system ships with a bunch of high-quality text-to-speech engines and is no longer limited to just the English language....

Occasionally, you might read about Trim(), TrimStart(), and TrimEnd() to remove text from strings. And this seems to really work well: PS C:\>...

In the previous tip you learned how you can use Export-CliXml to serialize data and then use Compress-Archive to shrink the huge XML files to only a...

If you’d like to safely store credentials (usernames and password) for your personal use in a file, here is a very simple yet extremely...

Start-Job transfers a script block to a new PowerShell process so that it can run separately and in parallel. Here is a very simple sample...

When you start signing script files, you want to make sure signatures stay intact even if the certificate that signed it expires at some day in the...

In the previous tips you learned how you can create a self-signed code signing certificate, save it to a PFX file, and read it back into memory....

In the previous tip we illustrated how you can use New-SelfSignedCertificate to create new code signing certificates, and store them as a PFX file....

If you’d like to digitally sign your scripts, the first thing you need is a digital certificate with the designated purpose set to “Code...

LDAP filters resemble the query language used by Active Directory, and if you have installed Microsoft’s RSAT tools, you can easily use the...

PowerShell remoting is a very fast way to query multiple computers because PowerShell remoting works in parallel. Here is a real world use case that...

The Get-FileHash cmdlet can generate hash codes for file content. It cannot generate hash codes for arbitrary text, though. And it is available only...

In the previous tip we explained how the Get-FileHash cmdlet (new in PowerShell 5) can generate the unique MD5 hash for script files. Hashes can be...

MD5 file hashes uniquely identify file content and can be used to check whether file content is identical. In PowerShell 5, there is a new cmdlet...

Inspired by an article by fellow MVP Boe Prox, below you’ll find a sophisticated function that creates balloon tip dialogs. You can find...

Did you ever need to convert numbers into strings with leading zeros, for example to compose server names? Simply use PowerShell’s...

Any error in PowerShell code surfaces as an error record object. Check out the function below which extracts all relevant error information from...

Get-CimInstance is a useful cmdlet to retrieve WMI information because it uses standard .NET DateTime objects rather than the awkward WMI datetime...

WMI can tell you when a system was booted, and this information can be re-calculated to find out the uptime: $bootTime = Get-CimInstance -ClassName...

Here is a small yet very useful function that receives data from other cmdlets and sends them to Excel: function Out-Excel { param( $path =...

Get-EventLog provides access to the content written to the classic Windows event logs. The most valuable information can be found in a secret...

Sometimes, you stumble across weird data formats, i.e. in log files, that won’t autoconvert to DateTime objects. Here is a quick approach for...

In the previous tip we explained how you can use the ActiveDirectory module and its cmdlets to find all domain controllers in your organization, or...