posts-powershell

Sometimes a PowerShell script should just produce something, for example a report, which then opens in Excel or notepad. You don’t want to...

PowerShell 5.1 (available on Windows 10 and Server 2016) comes with some new cmdlets to manage computer time zones. Get-TimeZone returns the current...

The only fundamental difference between cmdlets and functions in PowerShell is the way how they are programmed: functions use plain PowerShell code,...

If you need to run 32-bit PowerShell code from within a 64-bit script, and provided you are Administrator and use remoting, you can remote against...

For ages, systeminfo.exe returned all profiling information for a computer, and could made object-oriented in Powershell – somewhat: PS...

Beginning in PowerShell 5.1, there is finally built-in support for local user accounts. PowerShell 5.1 is currently available with Windows 10 and...

Frequently, Add-Member is used to create custom objects, for example like this: $o = New-Object -TypeName PSObject $o | Add-Member -MemberType...

In a previous tip we explained how PSCustomObject can create new objects really fast: $o = [PSCustomObject]@{ Date = Get-Date BIOS = Get-WmiObject...

To wrap up multiple pieces of information, you best store them in custom objects. The easiest and fastest way is to use the PSCustomObject:...

PowerShell “records” all your interactive command input to its command history, and Get-History shows them. If you played around with...

On www.powershellgallery.com, Microsoft hosts a public script and module repository where you can exchange PowerShell code with others (see more on...

Test-Path is highly useful to test whether a file or folder exists, and it can be used with any of the PowerShell drives, so it can also test...

There seems to be a bug in PowerShell 5.0 that limits the usefulness of the built-in help window. Whenever you run Get-Help with -ShowWindow, the...

To get the most out of PowerShell, you should at least update PowerShell help once. This downloads and installs the base set of help files that show...

If you’re reviewing some PowerShell code loaded into the PowerShell ISE, it’s really simple to get additional information. Click the...

There are awesome websites out there, and one is www.metabene.de (at least for German visitors)-- on 33 pages, the artist presents his drawings for...

In PowerShell, you can create complex error handlers but sometimes you might just want to know what went wrong so you can log it. No overkill...

File names are quite sensitive and may not contain a number of reserved characters. To validate file names and make sure they are legal, here is a...

Previously we illustrated how you can use a simple RegEx-based approach to find illegal characters in strings. We encourage you to expand this...

Previously, we illustrated how to use the -match operator to find illegal characters in a text. The -match operator finds only the first match,...

Here is a quick approach to do sanity checks and validate data. Let’s assume you’d like to find out whether an email address contains...

If you use PowerShell remoting and get “HTTP 403” errors, one of the more obscure reasons for this is a proxy that interferes with your...

As previously shown, CredSSP can be used to remote code without double hop issues. To use CredSSP authentication, though, you need to make...

In a previous tip we illustrated the double hop problem that can occur in remoting when your remote code tries to authenticate against a third...

Whenever you execute PowerShell code remotely with Invoke-Command, your credentials are locked to the machine you initially contacted. PowerShell...

Ever wondered why some programs launch whenever you log into Windows? Here’s a one liner listing autostarts that affect your login: #requires...

While you can contact the Active Directory to retrieve a list of group memberships for a user, a much easier way gets that information directly from...

Ever wanted to translate a security identifier (SID) to the real name? Here is a function helping you: #requires -Version 3.0 function...

Here is yet another free source of geolocation information, exposing your current public IP and location information: #requires -Version 3.0...

Here is a one-liner that retrieves information about your operating system: Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem | Select-Object -Property...