Last year I posted an update to an old Mr. Roboto script that was an update to an even older VBScript. Still with me? My last revision leveraged the new Get-WinEvent cmdlet to create an HTML report of recent error activity on one or more computers. The problem was that I didn’t account for older…
Category: Mr. Roboto
New Event Report
For a number of years I wrote the popular Mr. Roboto column for REDMOND magazine. When I first started the column, many of my scripts were written in VBScript. Then as PowerShell came along that became the preferred tool. Over time I realized there were some VBScripts that could be rewritten and even improved using…
Mr. Roboto Scripts
I'm slowly trying to revise my main web site. The original site had a script library page where all of my old Mr. Roboto scripts resided for download. Unfortunately, in many of the online Mr. Roboto articles the link they provided doesn't work now. So if you are looking for my old scripts, use this…
This Old Script
I’m very slowly revising my main web site. The upshot for now is that there is no direct link to my old script library. Many of my Mr. Roboto tools can be found on this page. Until I can finish the upgrade project, you can use this link, http://www.jdhitsolutions.com/scripts.htm to take you directly to the…
R.I.P. Mr. Roboto
I have some sad news to share today. The March 2010 Mr. Roboto column is to be the last. It seems that REDMOND is revamping somewhat and my column is being retired. But it has been a long run, and to be honest, the column has run its course. I’ve been doing the column for…
TechMentor Orlando 2010 Decks and Demos
I had a great time in Orlando at the TechMentor conference. The crowd was enthusiastic and asked good questions. As promised, here are my slide decks and demos. My sessions tend to be heavy on demonstration so I can’t promise you’ll get a ton of value from the decks alone. You’ll simply have to attend…
Putting the Squeeze on Files with PowerShell
My December Mr. Roboto column is now online This month’s tool is a PowerShell WinForm script that uses WMI to compress files. I used PrimalForms 2009 to build the graphical interface. The interface is essentially a wizard that lets you build a WMI query to find files and compress them. Results can be logged to…
5 Minute PowerShell
My October Mr. Roboto column is now available online. The article contains my suggestions for how someone completely new to PowerShell might spend their first 5 minutes. Perhaps not literally, since I expect most people will want to spend more than 60 seconds on my suggested steps. But overall I thought my proposal was a…
Absolute Beginning PowerShell
I was looking at my current Mr. Roboto column “Polish Your Shell” on learning PowerShell by starting with 3 basic commands and noticed a lengthy and serious comment. I’ve always felt PowerShell is easy to use and learn, which was the point of my column. However, the comments paint a different story and one that I feel is more pervasive.
I’m afraid the comment is representative of how PowerShell is perceived by many IT admins. They don’t have time to learn anything new or their hair is constantly on fire (to borrow a favorite Jeffrey Snover phrase). Even though the concepts of cmdlets, parameters and a pipeline seem easy and practically self-apparent, they are not. Especially for an administrator who has never had to open a command window before. Granted GUI-based admin tools might have been cumbersome, but at least you could make some educated guesses about how to use it. A command line is very different.
August Mr. Roboto link repaired
My August Mr. Roboto column was published online with a broken link to the PowerShell script. This has since been fixed. You can download the Get-WMIInfo.ps1 script from here.