As you probably know, Windows PowerShell (the one shipping in Windows) is done, and all efforts go into development of the new cross-platform PowerShell Core. This new PowerShell version is not (yet) shipping out-of-the-box in Windows, so in order to play with it, you need to download it manually.
Fortunately, there is a script that does the heavy-lifting for you. This is how you can download the script source code:
Here is a one-liner that retrieves your current public IP address:
PS> Invoke-RestMethod -Uri http://ipinfo.io ip : 87.153.224.209 hostname : p5799e0d1.dip0.t-ipconnect.de city : Hannover region : Lower Saxony country : DE loc : 52.3705,9.7332 org : AS3320 Deutsche Telekom AG postal : 30159 timezone : Europe/Berlin readme : https://ipinfo.io/missingauth
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PowerShell comes with a powerful yet simple way of monitoring file changes. Let’s assume you have a log file that changes every now and then. This would be a PowerShell script that monitors the log file for changes, and whenever a change occurs, executes some code:
# make sure this points to a log file $Path = '\\myserver\report2.txt' Get-Content -Path $Path -Tail 0 -Wait | ForEach-Object { "Detected…
Typically, key press detection is supported only in true console windows, so this approach won’t work for the PowerShell ISE and other PowerShell hosts.
However, PowerShell can borrow a type from the Windows Presentation Foundation that can check the state of any key. This way, it becomes trivial to implement an “abort” key that works in any PowerShell script, whether it runs in the console, Visual Studio Code,…
In Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, PowerShell can access storage reliability data so you can find out whether there is something wrong with one of the attached storage drives. This requires Administrator privileges to execute:
PS> Get-PhysicalDisk | Get-StorageReliabilityCounter DeviceId Temperature ReadErrorsUncorrected Wear PowerOnHours -------- ----------- --------------------- ---- ------------ 0 …
PowerShell can execute internal PowerShell commands and also regular console commands, so it’s not a bad thing to continue to use console commands for proven tasks.
For example, if you’d like to reset your winsocks, this would be a reliable solution:
#requires -RunAsAdministrator netsh winsock reset netsh int ip reset
Note that this code requires Administrator privileges, and may require a system restart…
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 you play with this tip:
PS> Install-Module -Name ImportExcel -Scope CurrentUser -Force
In part 4, we looked at misinterpreted data due to arrays found in the input data. As you have seen, you simply need to convert arrays to strings using the -join operator…
This is part 4 of our mini-series about the awesome and free “ImportExcel” PowerShell module by Doug Finke. Make sure you install the module before you play with this tip:
In part 3, we looked at misinterpreted data due to automatic formula conversion, and examined your options to post-process individual cell formats. Let’s examine issues…
This is part 3 of our mini-series about the awesome and free “ImportExcel” PowerShell module by Doug Finke. Make sure you install the module before you play with this tip:
In part 2, we looked at misinterpreted data due to automatic number conversion. Another issue can occur when raw data “looks like” Excel formulas in which case they are…
This is part 2 of our mini-series about the awesome and free “ImportExcel” PowerShell module by Doug Finke. Make sure you install the module before you play with this tip:
When you export data to Excel files, you may sometimes encounter data that is misinterpreted by Excel. For example, often phone numbers are misinterpreted as numeric…
Doug Finke has created an awesome PowerShell module called ImportExcel which comes with all the commands you need to import and export data from and to Microsoft Excel. It does not require Office to be installed.
We can’t cover all the richness this module delivers, but in this tip, we’d like to provide you with the basics to get it up and running, and in follow-up tips we’ll deal about some formatting tricks.…
In the previous example we looked at how numeric HTTP response codes can automatically be converted to descriptive text, simply by converting them to the type System.Net.HttpStatusCode.
PS> [System.Net.HttpStatusCode]500 InternalServerError
This works because System.Net.HttpStatusCode is a so-called “enumeration” and acts like a “lookup table”. You can easily dump all members of an enumeration, and for example…
In the previous example we created a small PowerShell function that checks web site availability, and as part of the test results, a HTTP response code was returned. Let’s check out how this numeric code can be easily converted into a meaningful text message.
Here is the function again that tests web sites:
function Test-Url { param ( [Parameter(Mandatory,ValueFromPipeline)] [string] $Url ) …
When a web site is unavailable, often the question is whether it’s you, or whether the web site is generally down for everyone else, too. PowerShell can ask a web service to check web site availability for you. Here is a simple wrapper function:
function Test-Url { param ( [Parameter(Mandatory,ValueFromPipeline)] [string] $Url ) Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Web $check = "https://isitdown…
Accessing RESTful web services is trivial for PowerShell: simply send your input data to a public web service, and receive the results.
Here are three PowerShell functions designed to each do a numeric conversion:
function Convert-InchToCentimeter { param ( [Parameter(Mandatory)] [Double] $Inch ) [Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12 $url = 'https://ucum…
PowerShell can validate AD username and passwords against the Active Directory:
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement $account = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.PrincipalContext([DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.ContextType]::Domain, $env:userdomain) $account.ValidateCredentials('user12', 'topSecret')
Note that this approach is for diagnostic purposes…
If you’d like to add an incrementing number to your output, here is a simple way:
Get-Process | Select-Object -Property '#', ProcessName, CPU -First 10 | ForEach-Object -begin { $i = 0} -process { $i++ $_.'#' = $i $_ } -end {}
Select-Object adds a new property called “#”, and ForEach-Object adds an auto-incrementing number to it. The result looks similar to this:
If you ever write PowerShell functions that need to accept sensitive input such as passwords, make sure you allow users to submit SecureString input. If you accept passwords via clear text, there is a substantial risk that others may see the password while being entered, or (even worse) that the password is logged and later can be found in dump files.
Here is a simple framework that illustrates how you can achieve safe…
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 many more (and hidden) PowerShell hosts running. Any software that instantiates the PowerShell engine is a PowerShell host. This could be Visual Studio Code (with the PowerShell extension installed), Visual Studio, or any other similar software.
To find out all currently running…
Most modern computers have more than one processor, either physical or logical. If you’d like to find out the number of processors, here is a chunk of PowerShell code:
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Processor | Select-Object -Property Caption, NumberOfLogicalProcessors
The result may look similar to this:
Caption NumberOfLogicalProcessors ------- -----…
In the previous tip we illustrated how you can dump all passwords from your personal Windows Password Vault. The same is true for basically any password manager as these programs are designed to return the passwords they store for you.
Google Chrome browsers store your personal passwords (and website history) in a SQLLite database. PowerShell can easily access this database and dump the information for you. To be able…
Windows has a protected password vault where it can store your secret passwords so you don’t have to always enter them manually in Internet Explorer or Edge.
If you get used to automated password managers, you may occasionally forget the original passwords. Here is a super simple PowerShell way to dump all of your passwords stored in the Windows password vault:
# important: this is required to load the assembly…
To download and install the Google Chrome browser, simply combine a couple of generic PowerShell commands:
$Installer = "$env:temp\chrome_installer.exe" $url = 'http://dl.google.com/chrome/install/375.126/chrome_installer.exe' Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $url -OutFile $Installer -UseBasicParsing Start-Process -FilePath $Installer -Args '/silent /install' -Wait Remove-Item -Path $Installer
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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 can be covered under your PowerShell window at times.
With a little-known trick, you can make sure the dialog box will always open on top of all other windows:
$shell = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell $value = $shell.Popup("You can't cover me!", 5, '…
Maybe you stumbled across code like this in the past:
$shell = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell $value = $shell.Popup('Restart Computer?', 5, 'Important', 36) "Choice: $value"
This chunk of code opens a dialog box and asks the user whether it is OK to restart the computer. The pop-up dialog has a built-in timeout so the code will never stall, even if running unattended.
However, since PowerShell…