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…
Category: PowerShell
Join Me at Techmentor Orlando
I will be presenting several sessions at Techmentor in Orlando, FL March 8-12, 2010. I will be doing the following sessions: Take Back your File Server (learn about Server 2008 file management features) Top 10 Non-PowerShell CLI Tools you MUST Know (learn about other command line tools that can get the job done) Scripting, Error…
Windows PowerShell 1.0: TFM Free-eBook
Now that SAPIEN Press is on the verge of releasing Windows PowerShell 2.0: TFM (http://www.sapienpress.com/powershell3.asp), they are making the first edition version of the book available as a free e-book. While you won’t learn about new features like remoting, there’s still plenty of useful information and you can’t beat the price. You can download the…
Find That Service
Once again, the fine forum members at ScriptingAnswers.com come through and help get my PowerShell idea engine revving. The latest post posed this basic question: “I need to query my servers and find all services using a specific service account.” The poster thought this would be a good opportunity to learn PowerShell and I wholeheartedly…
TechMentor Spring 2010
If you are thinking about what conferences to attend next year, I hope you’ll consider joining me in Orlando for the Spring TechMentor show. The show runs March 8-12, 2010 in sunny Orlando, FL. This is a great show where you can take away a ton of information that you can put to work immediately….
Is It Friday Yet?
Some days the week just seems to drag on and on and on….Like many of you, I can’t wait for the end of the work day on Friday afternoon. But how much longer is it until I can say, in a cliche ridden fashion, “TGIF!” Fortunately I have PowerShell to give me a pretty accurate…
PowerPack Challenge 2009 Judge
If you are an active member of the PowerShell community you may have already seen this announcement, but just in case you haven’t, Quest Software and the guys behind PowerGUI are running their annual PowerPack challenge. You could win a $1000 Amazon gift card. The contest ;runs from October 19, 2009 until November 15th 2009,…
Hanging Out My Shingle
Way, way back in the day professionals would hang out a painted shingle indicating they were open for business. Even if your literacy skills were lacking you could distinguish between a doctor and an undertaker. Although I think sometimes he did both, but that’s another story. I thought I should officially hang out my “shingle”….
Get-Printer
I think Out-Printer is a very handy cmdlet, and one that doesn’t get used much. Pipe any cmdlet to it and the output will be printed to your default printer. You use it the same way you would Out-File except output is printed instead of saved to a file. The cmdlet also has a parameter…
Drive Report Console Chart
In thinking about some of my recent posts, I realize I should make clear that these scripts and functions are not necessarily good PowerShell examples. They don’t take advantage of objects and the pipeline. They are single purpose and one-dimensional. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. My recent examples, and the one I have…
Get-NumberedContent
One of the reasons I enjoy Twitter is that it exposes me to PowerShell ideas and enthusiasts beyond my immediate circle. I came across a blog post from David Longnecker about a short function to display file content in a numbered format. Basically taking Get-Content and adding a line number to the output. Well I’m…
Out-Notepad
Maybe this isn’t the most earth shattering PowerShell function you’ll ever come across, but it saves me a few keystrokes. There are times when I want to see the results of PowerShell expression but the console output is insufficient. I want to see the results in a text file opened in Notepad so I can easily scroll, search or whatever.
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…
Add Tooltip help to your PrimalForms script
I’ve been doing some work lately in the newest version of SAPIEN’s PrimalForms 2009. I like to make my scripts as user friendly as possible without forcing someone to read lengthy and boring documentation. One technique that I’ve started using is to use a ToolTip control and offer a short description or instruction when the…
PrimalForms 2009 Script Editor
SAPIEN’s Primal Forms 2009 now has an integrated script editor that you can use as a standalone editor for PowerShell scripts. The app has integrated help, popup command help, a PowerShell browser, a .NET object browser. As you can see in the screen shot I’ve started a very basic PowerShell script.
Once saved, I can run the script and view the results in the output panel. You can open and edit existing scripts as well. If you want a more full featured editing experience with code samples, snippets and more, or if you still need to work in other languages like VBScript, you’ll want PrimalScript 2009. But let’s say you only require an easy to use PowerShell script editor that provides a Windows Form feature, then PrimalForms 2009 is the ticket.