Powershell

Occasionally, you may see a bunch of processes named "svchost" in your task monitor or Get-Process output. These processes are hosts for Windows...

Group-Object is a great cmdlet to create lookup tables. If you wanted to identify a Windows service by its process ID, here is a way: $serviceList =...

PowerShell introduces class support in PowerShell 5.0, but you can define your own classes in other PowerShell versions as well. Simply use C# code...

To quickly open new test hosts inside the PowerShell ISE that ships with PowerShell 3.0 and better, here is a small helper function: #requires...

The PowerShell ISE shipping with PowerShell 3.0 and better is actually a multi-host. It can host multiple separate instances of PowerShell. To add a...

PowerShell can define defaults for any parameter, so if you wanted to always submit a default value for Get-ChildItem‘s –Path parameter,...

If you’d like to assign the results of a command to a variable, and at the same time output the results, too, here are two approaches. You can...

Cmdlets and advanced PowerShell functions can have their own parameters, but they also always inherit common parameters. To see a list of common...

Sometimes you may want to get a good overview of the data contained in an object. For example, if you query the PowerShell process and display it in...

Profile scripts are PowerShell scripts that launch automatically once PowerShell starts. The path to the primary profile file can be found in...

Sometimes you may want to create your own objects to store multiple pieces of information. Here is a pretty dense oneliner that illustrates a quick...

If you migrated from VBScript to PowerShell, you may remember how VBScript mapped network drives. This option is still available in PowerShell....

Beginning with PowerShell 3.0, you can use New-PSDrive to map network drives. They will be visible in File Explorer as well. Here is some sample...

PowerShell supports console commands, so if you need to map a network drive, often the most reliable way is to use good old net.exe like this:...

Start-Process can start processes but does not support a timeout. If you wanted to kill a runaway process after a given timeout, you could use an...

If you need to run selected parts of your script with Administrator privileges, you could temporarily launch a second PowerShell with Administrator...

Here is a simple function to find out the reserved drive letters: #requires -Version 3 function Get-DriveLetter { (Get-WmiObject -Class...

To quickly (and permanently) set a bunch of environment variables, here is a nice approach: $hashtable = @{ Name = 'Weltner' ID = 12 Ort =...

To quickly locate a PowerShell script anywhere in your MyDocuments folder, take a look at this Find-Script function: #requires -Version 3 function...

When you override the ToString() method of an object you control how this object is displayed. The object content stays untouched, though: $a = 123...

When you retrieve results, you may want to add additional properties to the results so later you know where they came from. Attaching additional...

Maybe you'd like to tag a variable and provide some extra information. In PowerShell, use Add-Member and attach NoteProperties or ScriptProperties...

If you'd like to keep settings outside of your script and store them in a separate config file, then you can use all kinds of data formats for...

Did you ever need to compare two arrays? Compare-Object might help. Check this out: $array1 = 1..100 $array2 = 2,4,80,98 Compare-Object...