Powershell

In the previous tip we introduced the FileSystemWatcher and illustrated how it can miss filesystem changes when your handler code takes too long. To...

A FileSystemWatcher can monitor a file or folder for changes, so your PowerShell code can immediately be notified when new files are copied to a...

Lines like $MyInvocation.MyCommand.Definition can be useful to determine the folder in which the current script is stored, i.e. to access other...

Most old VBS scripts can be easily translated to PowerShell. The key command in VBS is “CreateObject” which lets you access system libraries....

PowerShell can run inside WinPE environments. If you’d like to detect whether your PowerShell script runs inside a WinPE environment, you can...

Starting with PowerShell 5, cmdlets like Extract-Archive can extract the content of ZIP files to disk. However, you can always extract only the...

PowerShell by default does not support the native cmd.exe command such as „dir“. Instead, it uses historic aliases called...

Here is a simple example using the PowerShell progress bar. The code displays a progress bar counting down a break. Simply adjust the number of...

Beginning with PowerShell 5, the PowerShell engine starts to log executed commands and scripts. By default, only commands considered potentially...

When you query an event log with PowerShell, by default you get back a text message with the logged information. For example, if you’d like to know...

If you are about to launch a lengthy automation script, why not turn off the display right away instead of waiting for the screen saver timeout to...

In the previous tip we covered klist.exe and how it can be used to purge all Kerberos tickets for the current user so that new permissions will take...

No need to reboot a system just to apply new permission settings. Instead, purge your Kerberos tickets so that you will get a new ticket based on...

Chocolatey is a free package manager for Windows that can be used to download and install software. Before you can use Chocolatey from PowerShell,...

Starting in PowerShell 5.1, the PowerShell console supports VT escape sequences that can be used to position and format console text. Note that this...

When you try and sort IPv4 addresses via Sort-Object, this fails: PS> '10.1.2.3', '2.3.4.5', '1.2.3.4' | Sort-Object 1.2.3.4 10.1.2.3 2.3.4.5...

In the previous tip we published a super-fast function called Test-OnlineFast, and this function was able to ping an entire IP segment in record...

In the previous tip series, we developed a new function called Test-OnlineFast that can ping multiple computers in record time. For some reason, the...

When you write events to an event log using Write-EventLog, you must specify a valid source name. However, there is no easy way of finding out which...

Here is a line of code that often puzzles PowerShell users: Get-Service | Select-Object -ExcludeProperty Name When you use Select-Object, its...

Here is a fun PowerShell function called Convert-PowerShellToBatch. Provide it with the path to a PowerShell script, or pipe in the results from...

If you’d need to find out the SID for a user name, here is a useful chunk of code that does the job: $domain = 'MyDomain' $username =...

Out-GridView always produces a table with one object per line: Get-Process -Id $pid | Out-GridView Occasionally, it would be more helpful to display...

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...

In the previous tip we talked about a public module called PSCredentialManager that helps you manage cached credentials. Sometime, less is more, so...

When you’d like to install modules for all users from the PowerShellGet repository, you need Administrator privileges. On PowerShell Core on...

Distinguished names are strings, and strings contain powerful ways of parsing data. The most powerful yet simple approach is the Split() method....

If you use the PowerShellGet module (which ships by default on Windows 10 and Server 2016), you can easily download and install shared PowerShell...

If you need to run a PowerShell script in regular intervals, why not run it as a scheduled task? Here are some lines that help you create a new...

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...