posts-powershell

PowerShell Modules in Windows 10 for Server Management Windows 10 comes with a number of PowerShell modules that you can use to control Server...

PowerShell comes with a bunch of Export- and ConvertTo- cmdlets so you can serialize object data to CSV, JSON, XML, and other formats. That’s great...

What Is BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer System)? BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer System) is the technique used by Windows to download...

WMI returns a cryptic code number of every distinct Windows SKU: PS> Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_OperatingSystem | Select-Object...

There is no a built-in way to launch a PowerShell script hidden: even if you run powershell.exe and specify -WindowStyle Hidden, the PowerShell...

For a long time, the command-line utility systeminfo.exe provides a wealth of information about a computer and can return object-oriented results...

Creating a Simple Multi-Channel Chat Room with PowerShell Here’s a fun PowerShell script that you can use to create a simple multi-channel chat...

It can be very useful to be able to convert an encrypted SecureString back to a plain text. This way, for example, you can use PowerShell’s “masked...

If your script requires external binary resources such as picture files or DLLs, you can of course ship them together with your script. You could,...

This is part 5 of our mini-series about the awesome and free “ImportExcel” PowerShell module by Doug Finke. Make sure you install the module before...

Checking Website Availability with a PowerShell Function In the previous example we created a small PowerShell function that checks web site...

The most widely known PowerShell hosts are certainly powershell.exe and powershell_ise.exe because they ship out-of-the-box. However, there can be...

In the previous tip we used an old COM technique to display a pop-up box with a built-in timeout. That worked pretty well except that the dialog box...

Why Some Web Requests Fail in PowerShell but Work in a Browser Sometimes, web requests that work fine in a browser do not seem to work well in...

In the previous tip we looked at the FileSystemWatcher object and how it can monitor folders for changes. To not miss any changes, however, an...

Each PowerShell host running PowerShell 5 or better opens a “named pipe” that you can detect. The code below identifies these named pipes and...

Rather than calling functions recursively, you may at times want to use a Queue object that you can load with fresh tasks while you are unloading...

Here is a PowerShell function called Lock-Screen that can lock the screen and prohibit user interaction. There can be a custom message, and the...

Why Encode PowerShell Code? Encoding PowerShell code is a great way to run PowerShell code outside the PowerShell environment, i.e. in batch files....

Why Some Registry Keys Can't Be Deleted in PowerShell Deleting registry keys is typically trivial and can be done with Remove-Item. However, every...

PowerShell can split large files in multiple smaller parts, for example to transfer them as email attachments. Today, we focus on splitting files....

How PowerShell Handles Mandatory Parameters When you define mandatory parameters in PowerShell, the user gets prompted for the value if it is...

Numbers are stored internally as bytes. An Int32 value, for example, uses four bytes. Sometimes it is required to split up the number into its byte...

It’s amazing how versatile PowerShell is: with just a couple of lines of code, you can turn any photo and image into a piece of ASCII art....

In the previous tip, we asked Active Directory to validate user account passwords. The same can be done with local accounts. Your PowerShell code...

What is WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)? WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) is not just a technique to create UIs. You can create any type...

Occasionally you come across lists (arrays) with empty elements. What’s the best way of removing empty elements? Creating a Software Inventory Using...