powertips

Windows 10 comes with a number of PowerShell modules that you can use to control Server functionality - like WSUS Update Management which is only...

PowerShell comes with a bunch of Export- and ConvertTo- cmdlets so you can serialize object data to CSV, JSON, XML, and other formats. That’s great...

BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer System) is the technique used by Windows to download huge files such as operating system updates. You can use...

There is no a built-in way to launch a PowerShell script hidden: even if you run powershell.exe and specify -WindowStyle Hidden, the PowerShell...

For a long time, the command-line utility systeminfo.exe provides a wealth of information about a computer and can return object-oriented results...

Here’s a fun PowerShell script that you can use to create a simple multi-channel chat room. All you need is a network share where everyone has...

It can be very useful to be able to convert an encrypted SecureString back to a plain text. This way, for example, you can use PowerShell’s...

If your script requires external binary resources such as picture files or DLLs, you can of course ship them together with your script. You could,...

This is part 5 of our mini-series about the awesome and free “ImportExcel” PowerShell module by Doug Finke. Make sure you install the...

In the previous example we created a small PowerShell function that checks web site availability, and as part of the test results, a HTTP response...

The most widely known PowerShell hosts are certainly powershell.exe and powershell_ise.exe because they ship out-of-the-box. However, there can be...

In the previous tip we used an old COM technique to display a pop-up box with a built-in timeout. That worked pretty well except that the dialog box...

Sometimes, web requests that work fine in a browser do not seem to work well in PowerShell. For example, when you navigate to...

In the previous tip we looked at the FileSystemWatcher object and how it can monitor folders for changes. To not miss any changes, however, an...

Each PowerShell host running PowerShell 5 or better opens a “named pipe” that you can detect. The code below identifies these named...

Rather than calling functions recursively, you may at times want to use a Queue object that you can load with fresh tasks while you are unloading...

Here is a PowerShell function called Lock-Screen that can lock the screen and prohibit user interaction. There can be a custom message, and the...

Encoding PowerShell code is a great way to run PowerShell code outside the PowerShell environment, i.e. in batch files. Here is some sample code...