powertips

The Get-FileHash cmdlet can generate hash codes for file content. It cannot generate hash codes for arbitrary text, though. And it is available only...

In the previous tip we explained how the Get-FileHash cmdlet (new in PowerShell 5) can generate the unique MD5 hash for script files. Hashes can be...

MD5 file hashes uniquely identify file content and can be used to check whether file content is identical. In PowerShell 5, there is a new cmdlet...

Inspired by an article by fellow MVP Boe Prox, below you’ll find a sophisticated function that creates balloon tip dialogs. You can find...

Did you ever need to convert numbers into strings with leading zeros, for example to compose server names? Simply use PowerShell’s...

Any error in PowerShell code surfaces as an error record object. Check out the function below which extracts all relevant error information from...

Get-CimInstance is a useful cmdlet to retrieve WMI information because it uses standard .NET DateTime objects rather than the awkward WMI datetime...

WMI can tell you when a system was booted, and this information can be re-calculated to find out the uptime: $bootTime = Get-CimInstance -ClassName...

Here is a small yet very useful function that receives data from other cmdlets and sends them to Excel: function Out-Excel { param( $path =...

Get-EventLog provides access to the content written to the classic Windows event logs. The most valuable information can be found in a secret...

Sometimes, you stumble across weird data formats, i.e. in log files, that won’t autoconvert to DateTime objects. Here is a quick approach for...

In the previous tip we explained how you can use the ActiveDirectory module and its cmdlets to find all domain controllers in your organization, or...

If you have installed the free Microsoft RSAT tools, you have access to the ActiveDirectory module. Here is a simple approach to find all domain...

Microsoft is giving away unlimited numbers of free ebooks on many different topics. Ebooks can be downloaded using a PowerShell script. Here are the...

Starting with Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1, PowerShell ships with many useful cmdlets for client and server configuration. This comes...

PowerShell is probably the easiest way to get rid of preinstalled Windows 10 apps. If you know the name of a particular app that you want to remove,...

You probably know the shortcut names that PowerShell predefines: Aliases like “dir” and “ls” help you save typing in...

Microsoft just announced that PowerShell 2 will soon be labeled “deprecated”. It will still be available for some time, but this is a...

In the old days, disk repair was performed by chkdsk.exe. This still works. In Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1, a new cmdlet called...

Knowing your Windows product key can be essential when you later need to restore your computer from a backup. Here is a simple one-liner to provide...

In the previous tip we talked about a public module called PSCredentialManager that helps you manage cached credentials. Sometime, less is more, so...

The public PowerShell Gallery (www.powershellgallery.com) is a place where PowerShell scripters can freely exchange scripts and modules. All you...

Measure-Object can also sum up property values. This is how you determine folder size. The following code calculates the complete folder size for...

In the previous tip we looked at how to efficiently count items like files in a folder. Here are some more examples. Counting the number of files in...