One of the projects that I've been a part of this year that's now complete is Windows Server 2016 Automation with PowerShell Cookbook - Second Edition written by Thomas Lee and published by Packt Publishing. I personally read each and every page of the book while it was being written along with testing every single line of code in each of the recipes in the book. According to the book's webpage on the Packt Publishing website, it has more than a hundred recipes and we're not talking about one-liners.
While Read more [...]
If you’re interested in some free PowerShell training where you’ll learn the basics of PowerShell from a best practices standpoint, I’ll be presenting a session on “PowerShell 101: The No-Nonsense Beginner’s Guide to PowerShell” for the Austin PowerShell User Group this Thursday, October 5th. The presentation begins at 6pm central time and is a beginner level session.
Here’s a little information about what you can expect from the presentation:
Interested in PowerShell but Read more [...]
Today, David Wilson from the PowerShell team at Microsoft, announced that Regions are now available in VSCode (Visual Studio Code) as of insiders build version 1.17.0.
I was hoping the region and endregion keywords would be case-insensitive unlike in the PowerShell ISE where they're case-sensitive. It looks like that's indeed what they intended since the region keyword is case-insensitive in VSCode, but unfortunately the endregion keyword is case-sensitive as shown in the following example.
There's Read more [...]
Got no training budget? This Saturday, September 30th, is your opportunity to show some initiative by leveling up your skills on your own time and at your own expense (it's free) at Gulf Coast Code Camp 2017. The venue is at the University of South Alabama and features 16 speakers who are experts in the technology space.
While I can't speak for everyone else who is presenting, my session begins at 9:40am central time where you'll learn the industry's best practices for PowerShell Toolmaking with Read more [...]
When working with PowerShell, there are lots of shortcuts that can be taken and while some of them may seem like a good idea at first, they usually end up costing you more trouble than they're worth in the long run.
I recently saw a Tweet that a fellow PowerShell enthusiast Tore Groneng responded to which referenced running commands in PowerShell without specifying a verb. Such as "Service" for Get-Service.
That works great, right? Not so fast. It might Read more [...]
1 | Service |
Based on the news today, I thought I would share a couple of PowerShell code snippets to detect the presence of and silently uninstall CCleaner.
You can detect the presence of CCleaner along with the version of it you have installed via the registry.
You can use a similar command to run its uninstaller silently if it's detected.
Give it a couple of minutes and then run the first command again to verify it has been removed.
If Read more [...]
1 2 | Get-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Where-Object DisplayName -eq CCleaner |
1 2 3 4 | if (Get-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Where-Object DisplayName -eq CCleaner -OutVariable Results) { & "$($Results.InstallLocation)\uninst.exe" /S } |
1 2 | Get-ItemProperty -Path HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Where-Object DisplayName -eq CCleaner |
I recently had a need to perform some security auditing on an environment that still has some servers running PowerShell version 2 (PowerShell version 2 is deprecated). One of the things I needed to determine was whether or not the Windows firewall was enabled on each of the servers in the environment. Luckily, all of the servers at least had PowerShell remoting enabled.
The PowerShell function shown in the previous code example is a wrapper for the Netsh.exe command. Read more [...]
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 | #Requires -Version 2.0 function Get-MrNetFirewallState { <# .SYNOPSIS Displays the per-profile state of the Windows Firewall. .DESCRIPTION The Get-MrNetFirewallState function displays the current firewall state for the Domain, Private, and Public profiles. .PARAMETER ComputerName The name of the computer(s) to retrieve the firewall state for. .PARAMETER Credential Specifies a user account that has permission to perform this action. The default is the current user. .EXAMPLE Get-MrNetFirewallState .EXAMPLE Get-MrNetFirewallState -ComputerName Server01, Server02 .EXAMPLE Get-MrNetFirewallState -ComputerName Server01, Server02 -Credential (Get-Credential) .INPUTS None .OUTPUTS PSCustomObject .NOTES Author: Mike F Robbins Website: http://mikefrobbins.com Twitter: @mikefrobbins #> [CmdletBinding()] param ( [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()] [string[]]$ComputerName = $env:COMPUTERNAME, [System.Management.Automation.Credential()]$Credential = [System.Management.Automation.PSCredential]::Empty ) $ScriptBlock = @' $Results = netsh.exe advfirewall show allprofiles | Select-String -SimpleMatch Profile, State for ($i = 0; $i -lt 6; $i += 2) { New-Object PSObject -Property @{ ComputerName = $env:COMPUTERNAME Name = ($Results[$i] | Select-String -SimpleMatch 'Profile Settings') -replace '^*.Profile Settings:' Enabled = if ($Results[$i+1] -match 'ON') { $true } else { $false } } } '@ $Params = @{ Scriptblock = [Scriptblock]::Create($ScriptBlock) } if ($ComputerName -ne $env:COMPUTERNAME) { $Params.ComputerName = $ComputerName $Params.ErrorAction = 'SilentlyContinue' $Params.ErrorVariable = 'Problem' if ($PSBoundParameters.Credential) { $Params.Credential = $Credential } Invoke-Command @Params | Select-Object -Property ComputerName, Name, Enabled foreach ($p in $Problem) { if ($p.FullyQualifiedErrorId -match 'AccessDenied|LogonFailure') { Write-Warning -Message "Access Denied when trying to connect to $($p.TargetObject)" } elseif ($p.FullyQualifiedErrorId -match 'NetworkPathNotFound') { Write-Warning -Message "Unable to connect to $($p.targetobject)" } else { Write-Warning -Message "An unexpected error has occurred when trying to connect to $($p.targetobject)" } } } else { $Params.ScriptBlock.Invoke() } } |
Setting up a scheduled task or job on individual servers to cleanup log and temp files just doesn't scale very well because you have scheduled tasks or jobs setup on lots of individual servers that need to be maintained. Today it's this server and tomorrow it's two or three more. It's much easier to setup one scheduled task or job on a server that's designed for management to remotely cleanup the desired files on all of your servers.
The following log and temp file cleanup script is provided as Read more [...]
You've signed up for a Microsoft Azure account and you've installed the Azure Resource Manager PowerShell cmdlets on your computer.
You login to Azure from PowerShell. You'll normally see most people use Login-AzureRmAccount, but that command is an alias (Login isn't an approved verb).
Login to Azure and provide the account login information when prompted:
Several of the cmdlets in Read more [...]
1 | Install-Module -Name AzureRM -Force |
1 | Get-Alias -Definition Add-AzureRmAccount |
1 | Add-AzureRmAccount |
If you follow me on Twitter, then I'm sure you're aware that I've been using nothing but VS Code (Visual Studio Code) as a replacement for the PowerShell ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment) for the past couple of weeks and while I had tried it in the past, I didn't previously think it was ready for prime time. That's now changed with all of the updates and work that has gone into it. From what I've found, it works fairly well flawlessly so I've created a short and simple video to help others Read more [...]
I recently discovered a rendering problem in VS Code where pressing escape doesn't delete a multi-line command in the PowerShell integrated terminal. I created a video to report the problem and I thought I would share it here since the quality was less than optimal when sharing it on Twitter.
https://youtu.be/0dySuC0RV4o
Here's a link to my original tweet to David Wilson and here's a link to the GitHub issue that Max Trinidad has created.
µ Read more [...]
You've been tasked with auditing print jobs on your company's Windows based print server to determine who is wasting so much paper, toner, and causing excessive wear and tear on printers. No budget exists for this task and you need to have something to show by the end of the day.
You would probably start off by searching the Internet, but most of the results you'll find to accomplish this task are over-complicated or simply don't work. Luckily this task can be accomplished with a PowerShell one-liner. Read more [...]
Recently, I reloaded my computer and noticed a problem when I tried to install the latest version of the Pester PowerShell module using PowerShellGet. I loaded Windows 10 version 1703 (the creators update) which has PowerShell version 5.1 installed by default:
Pester version 3.4.0 ships with both Windows 10 version 1607 and 1703. Both of these versions of Windows and/or PowerShell seem to work differently than previous versions when updating and/or installing Read more [...]
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_OperatingSystem -Property Caption, BuildNumber, OSArchitecture | Select-Object -Property @{label='Operating System';expression={$_.Caption}}, @{label='Version';expression={Get-ItemPropertyValue -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion' -Name ReleaseId}}, BuildNumber, OSArchitecture $PSVersionTable.PSVersion |
Late last night I received an email about a session being cancelled at SQL Saturday #628 in Baton Rouge which is scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday, July 29th. I'll be presenting my PowerShell 101: The No-Nonsense Beginner’s Guide to PowerShell session in that time slot which is the first session of the day in the PowerShell track, beginning at 9:15am.
I've presented this session a couple of times this year at other events and I've tweaked it each time based on the feedback I've received. Read more [...]
If you're interested in a free day of PowerShell training, there are numerous sessions on different topics in the dedicated PowerShell track at SQL Saturday #628 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana this Saturday, July 29th. I'll be presenting a session on how to "Automate Operational Readiness and Validation Testing of SQL Server with PowerShell and Pester".
Here’s a little information about what you can expect from my session:
Automate Operational Readiness and Validation Testing of SQL Server Read more [...]
Recently, fellow Microsoft MVP Mickey Gousset asked me how to remove existing user defined variables from the PowerShell ISE (Integrated Scripting Environment) before running a script a second time without having to restart the ISE.
While you could keep track of the variables you've used within your script to remove them once the script completes with the Remove-Variable cmdlet or by deleting them from the variable PSDrive, that can be a less than desirable solution for long and complicated scripts Read more [...]