Powershell

The environment variable $env:Path lists all paths that are included in the Windows search path when you launch an application. Likewise,...

To view disk partitioning information, use WMI: Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_DiskPartition | Select-Object -Property * Next, pick the properties you...

Scripting Active Directory does not necessarily require additional modules. With simple .NET Framework methods, you can achieve amazing things. In...

With WPF, PowerShell can create windows in just a couple of lines of code. Here's a funny example of a transparent screen overlay. You can call...

Here's a chunk of code that creates random passwords of different lengths for you: $length = 8 $characters = [Char[]]((31..50) + (65..90) +...

How can you securely embed confidential passwords in a PowerShell script? You can't. But you can make it harder for people to discover the...

To add a little glamour to your scripts, here are a few lines of code that display a folder selector dialog. When a user selects a folder, your...

Did you know that Group-Object can easily group elements by custom criteria? Here's a line that groups folders by their first three letters:...

Did you know that Windows maintains a list of all USB storage devices ever hooked up to your machine? And it's simple to dump that list: $Path =...

Ever needed a list of DLL files and their versions? Get-ChildItem can get this information for you. You just need to unpack some properties like so:...

In a domain environment, PowerShell remoting is working almost out of the box. All you might have to do is enable Remoting on target machines...

Resolve-Path is an excellent cmdlet to find paths that have the same nesting level. For example, here's a really short script that creates a text...

If you'd like to quickly select and copy results from the Console Pane of the PowerShell 3.0 ISE editor into your blog or favorite word...

Whenever you run Get-WmiObject against a remote system, it will create a new connection. So if you query different WMI classes, each query will use...

Are you familiar with the PowerShell Survival Guide? It's the ultimate PowerShell Wiki page, including videos, modules, and information about...

Get-WmiObject provides no IntelliSense for WMI classes, so you either need to know the WMI class name off hand, or use the parameter -List to search...

WMI can provide lots of information about a system, but sometimes it is just a bit too much. So when you query for logical disks, you often get back...

PowerShell 3.0 will auto-load modules as you have seen in a previous tip. However, with some modules, this technique may fail. Their cmdlets will...

Beginning with PowerShell 3.0, PowerShell is smart enough to know which cmdlets are exported by which extension module. So you no longer have to...

If you want to turn a Server 2012 (or Server 2008 R2) into a workstation machine and have it behave like Windows 8 (including the ability to burn...

Here is an easy way to get the MAC address, even from a remote machine: Simply replace the IP address with the one you are interested in. You may...

Once you pin PowerShell to your taskbar, you can always right-click the pinned PowerShell icon to open a jump list and launch PowerShell or the ISE...

Beginning in PowerShell 3.0, it is easy to monitor text-based log files in real-time. Try this: $Path = "$home\Desktop\testfile.txt"...

To get extensive help for all kinds of PowerShell operators in the PowerShell 3.0 ISE editor, first list all the different help topics about...

In the PowerShell ISE 4.0 command pane, when you hold CTRL, you can then use ArrowUp to move out of the command line into the results area. ReTweet...

LDAP queries are extremely powerful and can help find accounts that are missing information. This code would return all Active Directory users that...

Tired of inventing lame excuses yourself? Then here's a script that gets you a new excuse any time you call Get-Excuse! All you need is Internet...

PowerShell keeps a list of all commands you enter, but once you close PowerShell, the list is lost. Here is a simple one-liner that saves the...

To correctly capitalize words (making sure the first character is capitalized), you can either use regular expressions or a little system function....

PowerShell can access COM objects like Outlook Application. These two simple lines return the current Outlook profile: $outlookApplication =...