posts-powershell

Windows 8.1 ships with a new module called "Defender". The cmdlets found inside enable you to manage, view and change all aspects of the...

Did you know that you can actually search for local user accounts, much like you can search for domain accounts? Here is an example code that...

In PowerShell, local accounts and groups can be managed in an object-oriented way thanks to .NET Framework 3.51 and above. This will list local...

Windows 8.1 still offers the old cmd.exe command window in some of its context menus. To change that and replace cmd.exe with powershell.exe, in...

Did you know that you can manage your Office365 accounts with PowerShell, too? Provided you have an Office365 account, try this: $OfficeSession =...

The environment variable $env:Path lists all paths that are included in the Windows search path when you launch an application. Likewise,...

To view disk partitioning information, use WMI: Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_DiskPartition | Select-Object -Property * Next, pick the properties you...

Scripting Active Directory does not necessarily require additional modules. With simple .NET Framework methods, you can achieve amazing things. In...

With WPF, PowerShell can create windows in just a couple of lines of code. Here's a funny example of a transparent screen overlay. You can call...

Here's a chunk of code that creates random passwords of different lengths for you: $length = 8 $characters = [Char[]]((31..50) + (65..90) +...

How can you securely embed confidential passwords in a PowerShell script? You can't. But you can make it harder for people to discover the...

To add a little glamour to your scripts, here are a few lines of code that display a folder selector dialog. When a user selects a folder, your...

Did you know that Group-Object can easily group elements by custom criteria? Here's a line that groups folders by their first three letters:...

Did you know that Windows maintains a list of all USB storage devices ever hooked up to your machine? And it's simple to dump that list: $Path =...

Ever needed a list of DLL files and their versions? Get-ChildItem can get this information for you. You just need to unpack some properties like so:...

In a domain environment, PowerShell remoting is working almost out of the box. All you might have to do is enable Remoting on target machines...

Resolve-Path is an excellent cmdlet to find paths that have the same nesting level. For example, here's a really short script that creates a text...

If you'd like to quickly select and copy results from the Console Pane of the PowerShell 3.0 ISE editor into your blog or favorite word...

Whenever you run Get-WmiObject against a remote system, it will create a new connection. So if you query different WMI classes, each query will use...

Are you familiar with the PowerShell Survival Guide? It's the ultimate PowerShell Wiki page, including videos, modules, and information about...

Get-WmiObject provides no IntelliSense for WMI classes, so you either need to know the WMI class name off hand, or use the parameter -List to search...

WMI can provide lots of information about a system, but sometimes it is just a bit too much. So when you query for logical disks, you often get back...

PowerShell 3.0 will auto-load modules as you have seen in a previous tip. However, with some modules, this technique may fail. Their cmdlets will...

Beginning with PowerShell 3.0, PowerShell is smart enough to know which cmdlets are exported by which extension module. So you no longer have to...

If you want to turn a Server 2012 (or Server 2008 R2) into a workstation machine and have it behave like Windows 8 (including the ability to burn...

Here is an easy way to get the MAC address, even from a remote machine: Simply replace the IP address with the one you are interested in. You may...

Once you pin PowerShell to your taskbar, you can always right-click the pinned PowerShell icon to open a jump list and launch PowerShell or the ISE...

Beginning in PowerShell 3.0, it is easy to monitor text-based log files in real-time. Try this: $Path = "$home\Desktop\testfile.txt"...

To get extensive help for all kinds of PowerShell operators in the PowerShell 3.0 ISE editor, first list all the different help topics about...

In the PowerShell ISE 4.0 command pane, when you hold CTRL, you can then use ArrowUp to move out of the command line into the results area. ReTweet...