powertips

Deleting registry keys is typically trivial and can be done with Remove-Item. However, every once in a while, you may come across registry keys that...

PowerShell can split large files in multiple smaller parts, for example to transfer them as email attachments. Today, we focus on splitting files....

When you define mandatory parameters in PowerShell, the user gets prompted for the value if it is missing. The prompt uses the parameter name only...

Numbers are stored internally as bytes. An Int32 value, for example, uses four bytes. Sometimes it is required to split up the number into its byte...

It’s amazing how versatile PowerShell is: with just a couple of lines of code, you can turn any photo and image into a piece of ASCII art....

In the previous tip, we asked Active Directory to validate user account passwords. The same can be done with local accounts. Your PowerShell code...

WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)is not just a technique to create UIs. You can create any type of vector-based graphics composition and save it...

Occasionally you come across lists (arrays) with empty elements. What’s the best way of removing empty elements? Let’s first focus on a...

BOM (Byte Order Mask) is a characteristic byte sequence used in some Unicode encoded text files. If you receive text files with BOM that need to be...

Text files can be stored using different encodings, and to correctly reading them, you must specify the encoding. That’s why most cmdlets...

Here is a one-liner that returns the SID for the current user and can be used in logon scripts, for example:...

Every Windows installation has a unique UUID that you can use to distinguish machines. While computer names can change, the UUID won’t: PS>...

In the previous tip we illustrated how Get-Date can take a format string and convert DateTime values to strings. The string conversion always uses...

Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 finally come with a built-in PDF printer called “Microsoft Print to PDF” that you can use from...

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...