Recently, a number of PowerShell MVPs were having a discussion about the transcript feature in Windows PowerShell. One comment that arose was a need to see how long tasks have run or otherwise provide some sort of date time information. One solution is to use a customized PowerShell prompt and provide the information yourself. Here…
Category: PowerShell
Test Registry Item
I’ve been doing some work lately involving the registry and Windows PowerShell. One of the tasks was to create new registry keys and entries. But because I wanted to some robustness, I wanted a way to verify if a given key or entry already existed.
Understanding PowerShell Background Jobs
Last night I spoke to the CNY .NET Developers Group about background jobs in Windows PowerShell. Even though the audience was primarily developers, I discussed jobs from an administrator’s perspective, that is, using cmdlets. The job feature in PowerShell 2.0 is pretty amazing and you don’t need any programming skills.
Friday Fun: Color My World
The end of another work week and time for a little PowerShell fun. When I first started using PowerShell, I was fascinated by Write-Host and the ability to write colorized text to the console. Visions of ANSI art danced in my head, but I’ve moved on. Using colors with Write-Host is a great thing, and…
PowerShell: The Ultimate Ginsu Knife
You don’t have to stay up until the wee hours of the morning looking for an amazing tool that slices and dices like the famed Ginsu Knife. Are you looking for a way to speed up your work? Are you tired of the same old routine? Would you be surprised that your answer is already…
Get Some Style
Windows PowerShell has many ways to present and store information. You can display it to the screen, write it to a file, send it to a printer, create an CSV or XML file or even a pretty HTML report. The ConvertTo-HTML cmdlet underwent a significant facelift for v2.0 and is a popular cmdlet. But I…
New-PSDriveHere
I spend a lot of time, as you might expect, at a PowerShell prompt. Especially when training, presenting or doing demonstrations. Very often I’m in a folder with a long path like PS C:\users\jeff\Documents\Enterprise Mgmt Webinar. That takes up a lot of screen real estate and can be distracting. What I often will do is…
Friday Fun: Music of the Shell
We made it to the end of the week, and I don’t know about you but I have my head buried in PowerShell work. But you know what they say about all work and no fun…so I figured I’d take a break from serious PowerShell and do something a little fun. Although, I suppose you…
My TrainSignal Interview
During TechEd in New Orleans this year, I had an opportunity to sit down with some great people from TrainSignal. We had a great chat on PowerShell, why it matters and why you should take the time to learn it. I hope you’ll take a few minutes and watch the video.
PowerShell Background Jobs at CNY Developer Group
I will be presenting a talk on PowerShell background jobs at the September meeting of the CNY Developer Group on September 8, 2010 at 6:00PM. The group meets at the New Horizons office in DeWitt, NY. I hope you’ll consider coming. You read an abstract and register (free) at http://www.cnydevelopers.net/.
Pipelines, Consoles and Hosts
I continue to come across a particular topic in discussion forums that causes many PowerShell beginners a lot of headaches and more than a little frustration. I know I’ve written about this before and I’m sure I’ll cover it again, but when writing anything in PowerShell that you see in the PowerShell console, you have…
NetPoint Pro Review
My first work for Windows IT Pro has been released. In the August 2010 issue I wrote a review on Netpoint Pro. In short, I think many small to midsized companies should take a look, but I hope you’ll take a moment to read the full review. It will only take a few minutes.
Get Your Free Scripting Toolkit
If you were at this year's TechEd event in New Orleans, I hoped you dropped by the SAPIEN Technologies booth and picked up your free Scripting Toolkit. What's that you say? Check it out on the SAPIEN blog and then download your free copy.
PowerShell Weather Module
I first wrote a Windows PowerShell function several years ago to retrieve weather information via Yahoo’s weather service. I’ve been itching to rewrite it and finally found some time over the weekend. Turns out it’s a good thing I did because the method I had been using to query the Yahoo web service has been…
Get Parameter
As I continue to work on the 2nd edition of Managing Active Directory with Windows PowerShell: TFM, I find situations where I need a tool to get information out of Windows PowerShell. For example, the cmdlets in the Microsoft Active Directory module have a lot of parameters and I wanted to know some specifics. Now…