posts-powershell

Most cmdlets these days are organized in modules. Modules were introduced in PowerShell 2.0. Their main advantage is copy&paste deployment (no...

All cmdlets live in modules or snap-ins. To see which modules are currently loaded, use Get-Module. In PowerShell 3.0 or better, most modules are...

Get-Command is your primary tool when you need to find a command to accomplish something. You can search for verbs and/or nouns like this: # find...

WMI can find out details about your CPUs in just one line: PS> Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Processor | Select-Object -Property Name, Number* Name...

On servers, PowerShell can install Windows features with the cmdlet Install-WindowsFeature. When you save the result emitted by...

Script blocks are pieces of executable PowerShell code. You typically create them by enclosing code in braces. To dynamically create script blocks...

By default, folders and files inherit permissions from their parents. To stop inheritance and make sure only the explicitly assigned permissions are...

In previous examples, we showed you how you can add new NTFS permissions to an existing folder. If you want to reset permissions and make sure all...

To find out which NTFS access permissions have been assigned directly to a file or folder, check for the property "isInherited". This will...

In a previous tip we showed how you can add NTFS permission rules to a folder. To find out what kind of permissions are assignable, take a look at...

Often, you may need to create a new folder and also set NTFS permissions for the folder. Here is a simple example that creates a new folder and...

To improve readability, you can break PowerShell lines into separate lines. Get-Service | Where-Object { $_.Status -eq 'Running' }...

With a simple trick, you can add a dialog window that helps users to provide the function parameters for your function. Simply use...

To display text information, you can of course launch notepad.exe, and use the editor to display the text. Displaying text in an editor is not such...

If your script takes some time to complete, you may want to play a system sound file. Here is a sample illustrating how this can be done: # find...

Many file extensions are associated with executables. You can then use Invoke-Item to open a document with this executable. Finding out just which...

To split a text at each uppercase letter, without having to provide a list of uppercase characters, try this example: $text =...

If you'd like to find uppercase characters, you could use regular expressions. However, you would then provide a list of uppercase characters to...

In a previous tip you have seen that the PowerShell console supports all characters available in a TrueType font. You just need to convert the...

Did you know that console output can contain special icons like checkmarks? All you need to do is set the console to a TrueType font like...

When you call a function, PowerShell increases the nest level. When a function calls another function, or script, this will again increase the nest...

Sometimes you might want to abort a pipeline when a certain condition is met. Here is a creative way of doing this. It works all the way back to...

When you use the "Continue" statement inside a loop, you can skip the remainder of this loop iteration, and continue with the next....

To get a rough understanding how much memory a script takes, or how much memory PowerShell puts aside when you store results in a variable, here is...

When you use variables inside a script block, the variables are evaluated when you run the script block. To lock variable content, you can create a...

Mutually exclusive parameters in PowerShell functions use the "ParameterSetName" attribute to assign parameters to different parameter...

Sometimes, PowerShell functions have parameters that should be mutually exclusive: the user should only be able to use either one, not both. To...

If you'd like to create your own color-coded PowerShell scripts, for example formatting them in HTML, here is a sample that gets you started....

If you know beforehand how many results you expect from a pipeline, you can use Select-Object to stop the upstream cmdlets. This can save a lot of...

If a function returns more than one value, PowerShell wraps them in an array. However, if you pass the results to another function inside a...