powertips

By default, script block logging data is open to anyone, not just Administrators. When script block logging is enabled, any user can access the log...

In the previous tips, we took a deep look at how PowerShell 5 script block logging works: in a nutshell, when enabled, all PowerShell code that...

Some scripts may leave variables with sensitive information behind. This can happen by accident, when the global scope is used, or when users call...

Here is a super easy and useful PowerShell function called Out-HTML: function Out-HTML { param ( [String] $Path = "$env:temp\report$(Get-Date...

Frequently, PowerShell functions work with sensitive information, i.e. log-on information including passwords, and store this information in...

Credentials are objects that contain a user name and an encrypted password. If your PowerShell functions should be able to accept credentials,...

Ever wanted to know the original URL behind network drives? Here is an easy PowerShell way: # make sure the below drive is a mapped network drive #...

Downloading very large files can be a challenge because the download process may take longer than a machine is turned on. With BitsTransfer, you can...

A very convenient built-in way to download files, even with SSL connections, is Start-BitsTransfer. It also sports a progress bar that shows the...

Invoke-WebRequest can download files for you but may struggle with HTTPS URLs. To use SSL connections, you may have to change a default setting....

Here is a quick one-liner that dumps all Group Policy objects that have all settings disabled: Get-Gpo -All | Where-Object GpoStatus -eq...

Get-EventLog always requires you to specify exactly one event log via -LogName. You cannot use wildcards, and you cannot browse all event logs at...

You probably have used Get-EventLog frequently to dump event log information, for example: PS> Get-EventLog -LogName System -EntryType Error...

The PowerShell console starting in version 5 ships with a module called PSReadLine which does much more than just coloring command tokens. It comes...

PowerShell 6 (PowerShell Core) finally ships with SSH support: you can use SSH to connect to non-Windows machines for PowerShell remoting...

In the previous tip we showed how you can read and change BIOS settings for Lenovo computers. This was the code to disable WakeOnLan, for example:...

In the previous tip we explained how to manage Lenovo BIOS settings from PowerShell. Typically, there are single settings that need to be managed....

There is unfortunately no standardized way of managing BIOS settings for computer vendors. Each vendor employs proprietary approaches. For Lenovo...

Most cmdlets and functions are part of PowerShell modules. If you’d like to explore where exactly these commands come from, here is an easy...

If you’d like to lock the current workstation from within PowerShell, you can take advantage of the fact that PowerShell can run executables....

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 comes with new cmdlets like Extract-Archive that can extract (all) files from a ZIP file container. However, there is no way to just list...