Powershell

All Versions There are free Active Directory cmdlets from Microsoft (part of the RSAT tools) and Dell (Quest). They take the complexity out of...

All PowerShell versions Some variables are protected and cannot be changed. To identify these, take a look at this line: Get-Variable | Where-Object...

All PowerShell versions To make PowerShell scripts more robust, you can code a lot of requirements right into your script variables. When you do...

All PowerShell versions Variables in PowerShell are volatile. You can overwrite and delete them – unless you create constants. Constants can...

PowerShell 3.0 and later If your script needs additional resources, like text lists of server names, or picture files, or anything else, then make...

PowerShell ISE In the PowerShell console, you can pipe commands to the old-fashioned “more.com”, or better yet, to Out-Host...

All versions To find out which users have a (local) user profile on your machine, and where this profile is located, try this snippet: $path =...

All versions In a previous tip you learned how a one-liner can read multiple registry keys. In part 2, check out this one-liner: $lookup =...

All versions PowerShell code can be extremely dense. Here is a one-liner that reads all associated file extensions from the Windows Registry:...

All Versions Sort-Object is your one-stop solution for sorting. If it’s primitive data, simply pipe it to Sort-Object. If it is object data,...

All versions Let’s assume you would like to open your favorite websites in a browser when you start your day. PowerShell can do this for you...

PowerShell 3.0 and later Sometimes it is important to know just how long a command takes. For example, to monitor web site response times, you could...

PowerShell 3.0 and later Objects can contain nested properties, and the data you are after may be “somewhere” inside an object. To...

All PowerShell Versions Some cmdlets (like Remove-ADGroupMember) automatically ask for confirmation. This can be a problem in scripts running...

PowerShell 3.0 and later Beginning in PowerShell 3.0 PowerShell no longer ships its help files. Instead, you need to download them via Update-Help,...

Windows 8.1/Server 2012 R2 Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 come with a bunch of highly useful cmdlets for network adapter management. When you want...

PowerShell 2.0 and later In a previous tip we introduced an “acoustic progress bar” that made PowerShell play a sound for as long as it...

PowerShell 3.0 and later PowerShell ISE is completely scriptable and is accessible through the $psISE variable. This variable is present only within...

PowerShell Version 3 or better Get-Process gets you a list of all running processes, but it will not reveal the process owner. To find the process...

PowerShell 3 and better There are plenty of information web services out in the Internet, and many of them return results in JSON format. Here is an...

PowerShell 3.0 and later If you define a PowerShell function with some parameters, and you want a given parameter to have a default value that is an...

PowerShell 3.0 and later By default, PowerShell includes the current path into the prompt, and when you launch PowerShell as regular user, the...

PowerShell Version 2.0 and later In a previous tip we illustrated how you can use a web service to retrieve warranty information for DELL computers....

PowerShell 2.0 and later Let’s assume you want the user to submit a list of file extensions, or you are getting them from some other source....