powertips

In a previous tip we showed how to use Get-EventLog to extract all events related to system reboots. In PowerShell v2, a new cmdlet called...

To find out when a system restarted and why, use the below code to extract the relevant information from the System event log: Get-EventLog -LogName...

In a previous tip we showed how to use the Send-MailMessage cmdlet to send off emails and preserve special characters by using UTF8 encoding. When...

PowerShell has built-in support for sending emails: Send-MailMessage! All you need is an SMTP server. However, with standard encoding you may run...

If your machine is connected to the Internet more than once, let's say cabled and wireless at the same time, which connection is used?...

WMI is a great information resource, and Get-WmiObject makes it easy to retrieve WMI instances. First, use -List parameter to find WMI class names....

Whenever PowerShell asks for user input or reads text file content, the results are text strings. If you expect numbers and want to calculate, make...

Occasionally, you may want to act on every 2nd or 3rd file in a folder (or line in a file). The easiest way to identify every x. element is to use...

Ever wondered what Internet sites store inside cookies when you visit them? This line will dump all cookies: PS> dir...

Thanks to Peter Bishop, here's an enhancement to one of our earlier tips. It turns the command line output delivered by driverquery.exe into a...

To read in a text file and skip blank lines, try this: $file = 'c:\sometextfile.txt' Get-Content $file | Where-Object { $_.Trim() -ne...

To remove text at the beginning of a sentence rather than somewhere inside the sentence, use the operator -replace and the anchor '^'. Check...

In a previous tip you learned how WMI can deliver system profile information. Let's take this data and turn it into a HTML report. Here's a...

WMI can retrieve a lot more object instances than you might think. If you submit a parent class, Get-WmiObject returns all instances of all derived...

If you need up-to-date exchange rates, try loading the rates via XML from the European Central Bank. This sample gets you the latest exchange rates...

To convert a whole folder full of MS Word documents to PDF, here's a function that might help:/p> function Export-WordToPDF { param(...

What if you wanted to paste information from the clipboard? No sweat, here is a Get-Clipboard function that outputs any text held by the clipboard:...

In a previous tip you learned how to use clip.exe to send results to the clipboard. But what if you don't have clip.exe (let's say on...

Wouldn't it be fun if you could send results directly to the clipboard? Well, beginning with Windows Vista you can - thanks to clip.exe: PS>...

Your own PowerShell functions can have the same sophisticated parameters, parameter types and parameter sets that you know from cmdlets. However, it...

In a previous tip you learned how you can create ad-hoc shares using WMI. These shares persist until you remove them again. So if you'd like to...

Let's assume you need to access another machine's file system but there is no network share available. Provided you have local administrator...

Need a quick message box to display something or ask a question? Fortunately, PowerShell can access old COM components. Here's a line that...

In a previous tip you learned that using "more" to paginate output can be dangerous, and instead you should use Out-Host -Paging. To...

You might know the more.com tool: when you pipe output to more.com, the output is displayed page by page: PS> Get-EventLog -LogName System | more...

Some code snippets are really valuable, so you should turn them into functions to keep around as new PowerShell commands. Here's a sample...

In a previous tip you learned how you can convert raw CSV data from a console application such as driverquery.exe into real PS objects. Let's...

driverquery.exe returns all kinds of information about installed drivers, but the information seems a bit useless at first: PS> driverquery.exe...

In a previous tip, we suggested you to use standard parameter names for your own functions. To get a feeling for what the parameter names are that...

This is a best-practice message: when you create your own function, here are some things you should consider: - Function name: use cmdlet naming...