I thought I’d take a moment to let you know that my new book is finally available. WSH and VBScript Core: TFM (SAPIEN Press). This book is a complete reference to Windows Script Host and VBScript. My goal was to replace the official Microsoft documentation with something that a Windows administrator would actually fine useful….
Category: Scripting
MVP!
I’m very pleased to announce that I am now a Microsoft MVP in the Windows Server Admin Framework category, or in other words, PowerShell. I look forward to continuing to contribute to the PowerShell community, and anywhere else I can. Thanks to everyone who supported and mentored me over the years. I wouldn’t be an…
PowerShell Mini-Conference
If you’ve got some free time in early November and want to get up to speed on PowerShell in the least amount of time, then come to Las Vegas. Don Jones (PoweShell MVP) and I will be running a 2 day PowerShell mini-conference. This will be an intense 2 days of hands-on PowerShell training. Bring…
Online Script Library Resources
If you’re like me, you prefer not to re-invent the wheel when working on a scripting solution. You’d prefer to find a script written by someone else that accomplishes the same task(s). You might be tempted to jump immediately to Google or Yahoo. Before you do, let me give you some other online resources you…
Download Techmentor Orlando 2007 Updated Material
Don Jones and I have finally gotten zip files with all the updated session material from the Techmentor Orlando 2007 conference. There is a zip file for each of us at http://www.scriptinganswers.com/essentials.asp. I know in my zip file there are several readme files so make sure you look at them. I’ve included the video demos…
Powershell: TFM in 2nd printing
I’ve recently found out that SAPIEN Press is just about ready to go to a second printing of Microsoft Windows PowerShell: TFM. It has been very popular and in demand, which is always gratifying as an author. I know a number of copies were sold at the recent Techmentor conference in Orlando where Don and…
PWDMan Update
I’ve updated my Password Manager utility. If you haven’t seen this, I wrote about it in my Mr. Roboto column. This tool will scan computers and report the age of the local administrator password. If you’ve renamed the account you can change the account name to check. When finished, you’ll have a nice report showing…
NT Servers and WMI
My Mr. Roboto tools and scripts often need WMI. If your servers and desktops are running Windows 2000 or later this is no big deal. However, if you are still running Windows NT4.0 servers, these scripts and tools will fail. However all is not lost. You can download and install the WMI core for NT4.0…
Get Latest File
I was helping out in the MSN Groups scripting forum recently. The admin needed to find the latest file or most recently modified file in a folder. That sounded reasonable to me so I put together a function and short script that uses it. I thought I’d share it here: ‘GetLatestFile.vbsstrDir=”S:”WScript.Echo “The newest file is…
SAPIEN Scripting Makeover Contest
In case you missed it, or perhaps you’ve let it slide, you really need to take a look at the Scripting Makeover contest that SAPIEN Technologies is running. The contest winner gets over $20,000 in automation related products and services. Essentially, you submit your company or organization (there are some rules) and provide some adminisitrative…
More with Process and Service uptime
Like most things scripting, there’s usually more than one way to do things. I thought I had a nice solution for getting service uptime via WMI. But alas, there is an even easier way. PowerShell has a ConvertToDateTime method which will convert a WMI time to a standard date time format. $p=ps winlogon$p=get-wmiobject -query “Select…
iTunes Lyrics Viewer HTA
I’ve been toying around with the iTunes COM object (iTunes.Application) which gives you some pretty handy control over the iTunes application. I was particularly interested in having something display song lyrics so I developed an HTA that displays album art, artist and song information and lyrics. The tool will refresh whenever a new song is…
Updated PowerShell Help Utility
SAPIEN Technologies has released a new version of their free PowerShellHelp tool. This tool gets all the help information from your PowerShell installation and presents it in a nice GUI that now looks like Office 2007. The screen shot doesn’t really do it justice, but you get the idea. Not only will you get alias…
More with Service Uptime
I knew I wasn’t totally satisfied with my recent attempt at listing service uptime. I knew there was a more elegant solution and here it is: $s=Get-WmiObject -query “Select name,processId,state from Win32_service where state=’running'”foreach ($item in $s) {$p=(Get-Process | Where {$_.id -eq $item.ProcessID}).StartTime$u=(get-date).Subtract($p)Write-Host $item.Name `t $u.Days day $u.hours hours $u.minutes minutes and $u.seconds seconds} It…
PowerShell Process Uptime
Not too long ago, I wrote an MCPMag Tip Sheet column on using the pipeline in PowerShell. I showed how you could get the start time of a specified service: $svcname=Read-Host “Enter a service name” ; get-process | where {$_.id -eq (get-wmiobject win32_service | where {$_.name -eq $svcname}).ProcessID} | select -property StartTime We can take…