powertips

In PowerShell v3, Restart-Computer now has a number of useful new parameters. For example, you can restart a remote machine and wait for the reboot...

The new PowerShell ISE script editor in PowerShell v3 lets you customize a lot of colors, so if a particular color does not show well on a...

In PowerShell v2, Out-GridView was a useful way of displaying information in a separate window but its functionality was limited because you could...

In PowerShell v3, Get-Content was reading text files line by line. This was great for pipeline processing but could take a long time and also...

In PowerShell v3, the new PowerShell ISE script editor has improved a lot. Yet, it still has no real console but instead sports a useful console...

The new PowerShell ISE script editor that ships with PowerShell v3 has a much improved IntelliSense (code completion) that you can even fine-tune...

In a previous tip we showed you how to add your own little code snippets to the new PowerShell ISE v3 script editor. Here's how you can get rid...

If you'd like to find out whether a given URL goes through a proxy or is accessed directly, you can use this neat little trick: Function...

By default, when you import Microsoft’s ActiveDirectory PowerShell module which ships with Server 2008 R2 and is a part of the free RSAT...

If you already use the new PowerShell ISE v3 script editor, you noticed that the editor now has an almost real console with input and output going...

PowerShell ISE v3 script editor supports code snippets. Press CTRL+J to open a list of built-in snippets. You can add your own snippets, too. For...

With just a couple lines of code, PowerShell can search for Twitter news. If you happen to live in Germany, then this would tell you the latest...

Beginning with PowerShell v3, help is no longer shipped by default. Instead, in order to get help you need to download the help information from the...

Here are some more useful keyboard strokes that work in the new PowerShell ISE script editor that comes with PowerShell v3. These keyboard shortcuts...

Here's a quick and fast way of generating relative dates in any format: (Get-Date).AddDays(-1).ToString('yyyy-MM-dd') This would return...

Note: Beginning now, we will include useful tips on PowerShell v3. PowerShell v3 is the next generation of PowerShell that is in public beta right...

Here's a sample that illustrates how versatile PowerShell is. The function Get-Movie retrieves information about movies from the Internet....

If your script requires a real console, or if your script requires PowerShell ISE features, it may be a wise thing to check which host is actually...

Get-WmiObject is a great cmdlet that returns all instances of a WMI class: PS> Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_LogicalDisk All you need to know is the...

Type accelerators are shortcut names that represent .NET types. For example, you can use [XML] instead of [System.Xml.XmlDocument]. By default,...

Rename-Item can easily batch-rename large numbers of files, simply by piping file objects into it. Here is a sample that finds all PowerShell script...

When you create a new restore point with Checkpoint-Computer, you do not get back any feedback telling you whether the operation succeeded....

In a previous tip we shared how you can use PowerShell to create restore points and restore your system state in case something went bad. There are...

Let's assume your script needs to change a bunch of system settings. The worst thing that could happen is if your script breaks in the middle of...

If you want to dump results from a command, there are a number of ways. While they all do the same, they have tremendous performance differences:...

With two lines of PowerShell code, you can dump the USB storage history from your registry and check which devices were used in the past: PS>...

The current PowerShell V3 Beta requires an English Windows operating system. That's bad news for anyone running Windows 7 Professional or Home...

By default, PowerShell only displays a limited set of object properties. To view all available properties, add the following pipeline element:...

When you use Get-WmiObject to retrieve WMI objects, PowerShell adds a number of supporting properties. If you want to display only the native WMI...

Here's a useful function that you can paste into your scripts. It will tell you the current location the script is executed from. function...