An administrator often has to work with paths. Luckily, PowerShell has a couple of cmdlets that make it easy to work with paths, test their validity or extract just the information you need. The test-path cmdlet checks if the path refers to a valid item. For example:
test-path c:\config.sys
If you want to check for the existence […]
If you want to run PowerShell on remote machines, you can try PowerShell Remoting. It remotes the user interface with a couple of restrictions. For example, you cannot use command completion (<TAB>) and you cannot execute ‘external’ programs (.exe). Installation is simple: install a server component and a client component and you are done. With […]
PowerShell can access the registry like any PowerShell drive. Two drives are available: HKCU (HKEY_CURRENT_USER) and HKLM (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE). Navigate to HKLM or HKCU like so:
cd hklm:cd hkcu:
Isn’t that simple? Now you can use the dir or ls command (aliases for get-childitem) to list the content. The result:
I usually create another PS drive that maps to […]
In PowerShell, it is quite easy to work with XML, even if you are not very familiar with it. Because a lot of applications come with XML configuration files or output XML administrators should know how to work with XML from a scripting language. Since XML is just text, any scripting language can be used […]
Working with the file system in PowerShell is not that different from the good old Windows command prompt. Because of aliases and functions you have all the familiar commands at your fingertips: cd, del, copy, mkdir, rmdir, move, … To know the actual PowerShell cmdlet behind one of these aliases, for example copy, use alias […]
Windows PowerShell can be customized with a profile. A profile is just a PowerShell script that you have to save in a specific location. For detailed information about profiles, you should check out msdn.microsoft.com.
Basically, there are four different profiles:
profile.ps1 in %windir%\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0: this profile applies to all users and all shells.
Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1 in the same directory: this […]
This page contains PowerShell functions you might find useful.
Windows Administration
- Enable remote desktop (source: PowerShell blog and here). Does not work for Vista :-).
Function Enable-RDP ($Server)
{
$Terminal = Get-WmiObject Win32_Terminal –Computer $Server
$Terminal.Enable($True)
}
- Run as
Function Run-as
{
$cred = get-credential
[System.Diagnostics.Process]::start($args[0], $null, $cred.UserName, $cred.password, $null)
}
- Convert a SecureString to cleartext. Useful if you need to pass the cleartext password to […]
PowerShell Community Extensions
The PowerShell Community Extensions can be found on CodePlex. These extensions add a lot of functionality to PowerShell, just take a look at the features (1.1). To install, just grab the msi from CodePlex and run it.
From version 1.1, the installation works fine on Windows Vista. Uninstall previous versions if you are upgrading.
If […]
Hi and welcome to pshell.info. It’s a blog about PowerShell so what better way to start than provide some information about installing PowerShell and some of the basic functionality.
Download PowerShell from microsoft.com. There are versions for Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003, Vista and Longhorn. Of course, Windows Server code-name “Longhorn” has not been released […]
Welcome to pshell.info, a site about PowerShell. I use this site as an information hub about PowerShell mainly for myself and colleagues. However, I hope it also benefits you if you are looking for PowerShell related information.
Thanks for reading!
