Powershell

Using Read-Host to ask for user information can be problematic because it prevents scripts from running unattended. A better way could be to wrap...

If your client does not sync time correctly with your domain controller, try the code below. It does require Admin privileges: w32tm.exe /resync...

PowerShell offers numerous ways to connect to SMB file shares. Here are three different approaches: # adjust path to point to your file share...

To safely delete files, folders, or entire drives, PowerShell can use the built-in cipher.exe tool. This line would safely delete the old user...

Get-OrganizationalUnit (from Microsofts free RSAT tools) can search for organizational units based on fully distinguished name or GUID, or you can...

Provided you have installed the free Microsoft RSAT tools, here is a simple way to check whether an OU exists: $OUPath =...

Variables and function parameters can be automatically validated through validation attributes. Here is a simple example making sure $test1 can only...

Beginning with Windows Server 2012, you can easily export and re-import DHCP settings. Cloning or migrating DHCP servers is a snap. The example...

The free Microsoft RSAT tools come with the PowerShell “ActiveDirectory” module: plenty of cmdlets help you administer Active Directory...

In the previous tip we explained that ToString() is a fuzzy way of describing an object, and that the object author can decide what ToString()...

Any .NET object has a method ToString() that returns a text representation. This is also what you get when you output an object in a string....

You can easily assign the [Int] type to a variable to make sure it can contain only digits. But did you know that you can also apply a regex...

If you just need a bunch of randomly generated MAC addresses, and you don’t care much about whether these addresses are actually valid, then...

PowerShell contains some binary operators that are not so commonly used, for example bitwise shifting. The -shl operator shifts bits to the left:...

Here is how you convert a binary text string into the corresponding integer value: $binary = "110110110" $int =...

Finally in PowerShell 5, there is support for sending results to the clipboard, and receiving results from the clipboard: PS> Get-Command -Noun...

There are two ways of replacing text in a string: the Replace() method, and the –replace operator. They work fundamentally different....

The static .NET method HtmlEncode does a good job encoding the usual character codes but fails with many special characters. To encode all...

There is a static .NET method that you can use to HTML-encode text, for example if you want the text to display correctly in HTML output: PS>...

This line finds all Word documents in your profile: Get-ChildItem -Path $home -Filter *.doc* -Recurse If you’d like, you can easily print them all....

In Germany, there are publicly available media databases with most of the TV content broadcasted by public stations. It just takes very little...

Whenever PowerShell records an error, it wraps it in an Error Record object. Here is a function that takes such an error record and extracts the...

Sometimes it requires just a couple of lines of code in PowerShell to produce highly useful helpdesk tools. Here is one that displays all currently...

Sometimes it could be useful to load all attributes from a given AD user into a hash table. This way, you could edit them, and then use Set-ADUser...

In the previous tip we illustrated how Get-FolderStructureWithPermission can document and create a list of all nested folders in a structure, along...

Sometimes you need to re-create a nested folder structure, and may also want to clone the NTFS permissions. Today we are tackling the first step:...

In part 3 of our mini-series about running console applications in PowerShell, here is a goodie: how can you run a console application separately...

When you directly launch a console-based application, PowerShell returns its exit code (aka Error Level) in the automatic variable $LASTEXITCODE....