Subscribe via RSSI’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.
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…
Friday Fun Playing with Strings
While I was busy working, it turned into Friday which means time for a little PowerShell fun. I can’t say you’ll find any deep, meaningful, production use from today’s post, but you might pick up a few techniques, which is really the point. Today we’re going to have some fun with strings and arrays.
PowerShell ISE New Function
Yesterday I showed how to add a menu choice to the PowerShell ISE to insert the current date and time. Today I have something even better. At least it’s something I’ve needed for awhile. I write a lot of advanced functions in PowerShell. I’m often cutting and pasting from previous scripts and generally not being…
PowerShell ISE Insert DateTime
I still don’t leverage the PowerShell Integrated Script Editor (ISE) as much as I should. But after reading a few recent entries from The Scripting Guys on inserting help and headers into a script, I thought I’d dig in a little more. I’ve a few things to share but today I want to show you…
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.
PowerShell Is Not Omnipotent
Last week I was working on a problem in a PowerShell forum. The admin was having problems getting Add-Computer to work. After a bit of “try this/try that” something became clear, and it’s something that is easy to overlook. Especially when we get lulled into thinking PowerShell is omnipotent.
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…