DOWST.DEV

workforce. For Always On VPN administrators, PowerShell is an indispensable tool for achieving this goal. Not only can PowerShell be used to automate the installation and configuration of Windows Server Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) server

it easier to manage. In this article, I'll cover a few of the ones I've found most useful over the years when it comes to managing Windows Server.

example-based approach to help inspire you to learn the skills you need to wrangle files.

use PowerShell to check if a file exists, along with other file examples, stay tuned.

Get-WinEvent cmdlet can retrieve classic Windows event logs like the System and Application logs, logs generated by Windows Event Log technology, and even Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) logs!

powershell based healthcheck and / Or documentation dashboard. Customers may use this to perform their day to day checks before start of business to ensure the WVD availability. and at the same time be able to keep track of their inventory on WVD.

encryption. Similarly, it doesn't create the configured protectors that are necessary for activating BitLocker. Manage-bde, PowerShell, or the WMI class Win32_EncryptableVolume serve this purpose.

Directory domain to get a nice list in the output.

module in PowerShell, you can add .msu updates, apps, and drivers to a Windows image offline without the need to boot it up.

show you now how to do that and how to access HKCC with PowerShell. Let's get started.

remote network access for Windows clients. However, Always On VPN is provisioned to the user, not the machine as it is with DirectAccess. This presents a challenge for deployment scenarios that require the VPN connection to be established before the user logs on.

(RRAS) for Always On VPN.

Unfortunately this feature isn't built into Windows 10. So... Powershell to the rescue!

Windows services you could fire up the services.msc MMC snap-in for one-off tasks but what if you need to build some kind of automation with PowerShell? Learn how to use PowerShell to get a service, use PowerShell to start a service, use PowerShell to stop a service, and use PowerShell to restart a service in this tutorial!

can make your life better as an IT professional. I have a friend - let's call her Gladys Kravitz. Gladys and I were chatting and she mentioned how tricky it is to pull information out of Windows event logs. If I recall, she was looking at 4625 events in the Security log which represents failed logon attempts.

ways to implement it with a nice and accurate layout.

shows how to deploy this configuration to a Windows 11 machine using PowerShell provided by Bradley Wyatt AKA 'The Lazy Administrator'. PowerShell scripts can be used to configure NON Enterprise or Educational licensed devices.

PowerShell.

Windows Event logs.

script to perform a bulk Windows 11 hardware compatibility check on domain computers.

instances of the same process running on your system. This illuminating technique involves the adept utilization of the Compare-Object cmdlet, revealing insights that might otherwise remain hidden.

hours later I created this. Hope it helps someone else.

automatically accept all EULA prompts for the SysInternals tools. I know there is a command-line switch I can use, but I never remember to use it. Setting the registry key appears to accept EULAs globally. Naturally,...

Manager, or by using command-line tools like subinacl.exe or icacls.exe. In this blog post, I will show you how to set NTFS permissions in two different ways using PowerShell 🙂

using the takeown.exe and icacls.exe commands driven by PowerShell, and the second example is using the takeown.exe and native Get-Acl and Set-Acl PowerShell cmdlets. Credits: Thanks to Gary Blok for showing me the Get-Acl and Set-Acl PowerShell cmdlets.

into Chocolatey. Stephen is a support engineer for Chocolatey and active PowerShell community member.

files to multiple destinations. If you look at help for Copy-Item, which you should, you'll see that the Destination parameter does not take an array. That's ok. I can fix that. However, I have a disclaimer that you should consider this a proof-of-concept and not production-ready code.

points capture important system files, the registry, and drivers. In addition to using the System Properties applet, you can manage system restore points with PowerShell and vssadmin.exe.

Invoke-Command to run PowerShell code in the context of a scheduled task process. This is a fun way to bypass NETWORK logon limitations like the Windows Update API

been missing two things I often use: Notepad and Windows ISE. In this blog post, I will show you how to start Windows Sandbox and automatically install your preferred editors and tools using WinGet and PowerShell.

Windows 11.

with PowerShell.

simple methods for adding drivers and configuring settings in an image. After booting from a customized WinPE, either the OSDCloudGUI or an automated script initiates the installation.

all about Efficiency, Speed, Productivity. Hence we have put together list of all powershell commands that should help you deploy a WVD infrastructure framework in just under 30 minutes! For this to work as claimed.. first! ensure that you have all of the pre-requisites setup and ready to go!

computer involving both servers and workstations, using a variety of techniques. Three of the most common tools in a Windows environment are Microsoft Remote Desktop (RDP), VMware Console access, and Microsoft Management Console (MMC), but we can also use SMB shares, PowerShell remoting, and PsExec. This article will you give an overview of the most popular ways gaining remote computer access, along with some tips of what you can do if the remote connection fails.

discuss what chocolatey is, software management automation, and dive into working with choco. Stop deploying software the hard way!

task, I will use PowerShell and especially, the BurntToast module which is a custom module available on GitHub.

paperless environment each day. Unfortunately we're not at that future just yet, so we have to document print servers and their settings.

condition, such as a file being changed on the system. You can 'notify' the handler task, in which case Ansible knows that at the end of your playbook, it will execute that task regardless of where in the playbook you currently are, but **only if the notifying task has caused a change to the system**.

Windows Sandbox feature. I think I tinkered with a pre-release version and was intrigued. I normally have a set of Hyper-V virtual machines that I can test with, but I'm always looking for something new to play with. And what is better to play with than a sand box!

employees. This laptop comes with a lot of preinstalled applications (bloatware) so I was looking for some simple but efficient way to silently remove them. And by efficient I mean avoiding the need to manually find an uninstall command for each preinstalled application.

PowerShell and Scheduled PowerShell Jobs.

might want to clear the Windows recycle bin from time to time, to remove unnecessary files and free up space. You can do that using the Windows user interface, or you can empty the Windows recycle bin using PowerShell. The Clear-RecycleBin is a simple PowerShell cmdlet, which removes the file from the Windows recycle bin.

post, I will show you a way to use AppLocker on Windows 10 Pro and Windows 11 Pro.

power settings of the network adapters. Since I like to start both my PC and notebook from a remote location or from within the same network, I wrote a little PowerShell function to enable Wake-on-LAN (WoL) again.

small blog post 🙂 I had to export a registry from a client on which regedit tools were blocked. Exporting using PowerShell is an option, but the format isn't that great by default. In this blog post, I will show you how to export it to a friendly format.

me in my environment. But that doesn't mean it is necessarily right for you and your environment. There are plenty of ways to use PowerShell to achieve the same results as my code. This is something you should always keep in mind when looking at someone else's code. But enough caveats. In the previous post I left you with a tease that there is more to be done with PSDrives. Let's look at that today.

thanks to Alex.

Once you identify duplicate files, you can move them to another location, or you might even want to permanently remove all duplicates.

admin or the script will not function correctly. I wish I could find a job where writing these scripts is encouraged. My current customer-facing remote support job does not value these type of scripts. Thanks for all the upvotes 🙂

work on yesterday? Or what files were modified in the last 48 hours?

need to spend any money by building a PowerShell last logon and history script? You can find the last logon date and even the user logon event ID with the Windows event log and a little PowerShell!

your system.

certainly possible that you may intentionally want a 0 length file. But perhaps they are artifacts or accidents that you'd like to clean up. Here's one approach you might take.

process a request. Windows Remote Management (WinRM) is a Windows built-in remote management protocol that helps exchange information between different systems. For instance, you can spot it being used in Exchange, WSUS, and Microsoft Teams, especially when you're running PowerShell scripts and other third-party tools.

called HP Power Manager, in which it tells you the health and status of your battery. Related Posts: This is pretty useful, but sometimes you need to access this information via PowerShell or WMI for scripting or Inventory. I'm going ... Read more

patches installed in the last three months.

make sure they had received the correct task, deployed from a Group Policy. Well, PowerShell to the rescue. Here is a small PowerShell snippet that will return the command line from a give task:

Elasticsearch.

defining an FSLogix App Masking rule set.

rollout of PowerShell v3.0. What's the difference between these management interfaces? Which one should you use, and why?

multiple windows machines where enterprise tools such as WSUS, SCCM and other 3rd party tools are unavailable.

e.g. on a reboot. There's no documented way to determine if a key is volatile so I wrote a PowerShell function that uses the undocumented way

working with. It's quite easy in PowerShell, and without a lot of code, you can reasonably quickly get necessary information about data stored on your desktop or anywhere else for that matter.

PowerShell? Get started controlling Windows updates with the PSWindowsUpdate module in PowerShell!

the same thing with your Toast Notifications.

Restart-Computer and Stop-Computer. Each command can

and which gets automatically deleted after the powershell session ends. Any help is much much appreciated .Thank you

performance on desktops to determine the root cause of desktop performance issues.

Here’s how IT can simplify the process with Chocolatey’s command-line input.

called Quick Access. Many users and administrators unjustly ignore this handy Windows tool

Since PowerShell ties into the .NET Framework, you can change these restrictions with a script. In this post, you’re going to learn how to change registry permissions with PowerShell using the?Get-Acl?and?Set-Acl?cmdlets.

script. 

machine alone, because it looks exactly the same. However, there are several ways to verify it.

if you are planning to install the same programs on your new machine.

update with PowerShell, but where can you download offline update files? Thankfully, the Microsoft Update Catalog site provides offline .msu files for all updates that are released. And, using the MSCatalog module, it's a breeze to download and install these offline updates using PowerShell.

using WPF.

further. In this tutorial, you're going to learn how to use PowerShell to get a computer name in a few different and sometimes unexpected ways.

Sort of like Spotlight, except for your desktop background. Check it out!

currently logged on to a computer. Luckily, you can use PowerShell to get current users on local or remote computers.

up valuable CPU cycles. What do you do? Kill it!

the manager, then removing yourself. Since I've always been the only one using this script, I've hardcoded my username into the script. However, other people will be using this script.

Websites are one of IIS's main features and, using PowerShell, you can easily manage and automate IIS websites with ease!

instead of net.exe. The SmbShare module's cmdlets can display, connect, and disconnect shared drives. PowerShell also supports newer SMB features, such as QUIC and Compression.

preview window. Can I fix that?

we can automate this process allowing you to go home early.

ingesting around 4,000 new files per hour. This job was for a single client, and my company has multiple customers with similar needs. Keeping the data organized and available has been a challenge for over a year, and we have been working toward a solution for some time now.

errors when the target files don't exist or already exist. Lucky for you, there are ways in PowerShell to check if a file exists before doing anything to it.

through the user interface, PowerShell provides several methods for rebooting a computer remotely.

Get-FileHash generates hash values both for files or streams of data. A hash is simply a function that converts one value into another. Sometimes the hash value may be smaller to save on space, or the hash value may be a checksum used to validate a file.

we will look at how to use Windows PowerShell to get or change...

reduced in size from ~2.1 GBs to ~1.1 GBs. Find out what this mean for you as a PowerShell user?

add a local or shared network printer to your Windows installation. In this post, I will also explain how you can list printers, add a printer port, set the default printer, and remove a printer with PowerShell.

users. So here is my first module for Remotedesktop Messaging. If you liked it you may also want to have this cmdlet permanently on your rdserver for notifying your users every time there is a problem or maintenance. I?ve converted the PS Script into a module so that it is much easier to import and use it. In this article I ?ll describe how to install it.

Windows Services much easier. In this article, we will show you how to use MSI Builder to create an installer for your Windows Services.

within the servers I maintain for demos. I actually thought a security update would've removed the browser, but after applying updates for June, July, and August, I realized it would be up to me to remove the browser.

Module to display performance metrics.

launched processes & if a browser (configurable) & is elevated then it will be terminated & written to the event log. Script itself must be run elevated, obviously.

years. But doesn't eyeballing files and contents strain your eyes at some point? Well, lucky for you, PowerShell lets you compare objects the way you want to with the Compare-Object command.

Citrix.

Quser displays information about logged on users on the local computer and on

PowerShell only.

creating large EFI volumes (984MB) by now, but I keep finding folks who have 100MB and run into issues.

working with items in the recycle bin. You were asked to calculate how much space the recycle bin is using and then restore a file. If you'd prefer, stop reading this post, check out the challenge and see what you can come up with. If you get stuck, this article might get you back on track. Although, I'm sure there are several ways to meet the challenge. My solution is far from the only solution.

lately I've been trying with Windows 10 Sandbox. This is handy when all I need is a Windows 10 desktop. When I setup the system, I have particular settings I need to configure. Naturally I use a PowerShell script to automate the process. One item that I wanted to address was Windows 10 taskbar. When I'm recording a course, I like to have it auto-hide. Sure, I could manually set it. But that's no fun.

operating systems, hardware and of course software. Typically, machines are managed and configured with group policy and SCCM, or perhaps other more modern methods like Chef or Puppet. One of the symptoms of an unhealthy Windows computer is the amount of time it takes to boot up.

Monday, I'm showing off BurntToast. BurntToast is a module for showing notifications in Windows 10. We'll look at how to send basic notifications, show progress bars, buttons and even kick off PowerShell scripts from notifications.

office container have less then 10 % free space

pretty sure it was due to permissions. But that didn't stop me from writing something to monitor them! The script loops through all scheduled tasks and if it finds Tasks that haven't run in a day and aren't disabled, it will log it to a array, and then send off a email HTML Chart with relevant information.

Storage Spaces is becoming more relevant each day, with S2D and larger deployments. Storage Spaces is Microsoft's successor to the classical Windows Software RAID options.

used for. I've tried to describe as much as possible on the github page and the previous blog about it. But one I wanted to talk about real quick is the ability to create Toast notifications.

information in your MSI/MSTs? I?ve developed a Powershell script in which you can configure a template (properties and summary information) and apply it to MSIs, already done MSTs or you can create an MST with this script.

. From nothing to usable in less than 30 minutes thanks to @chocolateynuget , #boxstarter and #powershell.

detail of the version number? Then wanting to know the last time they logged on? PowerShell prov...

pains of windows admin from a console is accessing the windows eventlog. Since they are not simple text files like Linux, special PowerShell CMDLets must be used to retrieve them. Due to the frequency of needing to do it, one of the biggest challenges is tailing an eventlog while waiting for results.

configuration PowerShell script.

tired of my team having to look up the DISM command line (no PowerShell equiv), so I thought I would write a new function to add to the OSD Module

interactive partitioning with a script. Microsoft's examples for this purpose rely on batch files and Diskpart. However, installing PowerShell in Windows PE allows for a much more elegant solution.

On how to deliver what PowerShell can do. Then I saw on some forum people asking BGInfo to expand and allow running PowerShell scripts so that the data on the BGInfo Wallpaper can be gathered from PowerShell rather than VBS. I thought this was a great idea to create BGInfo using PowerShell without the necessity of using BGInfo at all.

system properties.

about PowerShell get file size with various methods and examples. To check the file size using PowerShell, you can use the Get-Item command followed by the .Length property.

techniques.

patching.

tutorial.

Register-LumosScheduledTask cmdlet to automate Light/Dark switch on Sunrise/Sunset based on your locale.

every folder in a particular file share. As an IT Architect I have numerous tools at my disposal that would be able to acquire the data my business partner needed. A few lines of PowerShell was the easiest to implement.

environment and if you want to search for them

safe filenames that include the date and time. If you're just starting this post now, then head over to PowerShell.org to read the beginning of this article. Otherwise, continue reading below.

based on the agressiveness argument. The higher the agressiveness, the more CPU throttling is performed. The number can be between 1 and 10 including decimal places. A duration can be set, in minutes or parts there of, for how long the selected process will be monitored/adjusted but if set to 0 then the process will be monitored/adjusted until it exits. WARNING: This may make interactive applications become sluggish for users if they are targeted.

The goal is to utilize the toolkit in a more consistent and easier to uddate manner

version 5+ and .NET 4.0 are required

Windows systems, such as the type of installation, available disk space, installed applications, kernel build number, uptime, registered owner, and the number of processors.

new command.

Powershell cmdlet to monitor file changes in a directory tree.

always curious about what WinGet will download and how it does the silent install of the specified software. In this blog post, I will show you an easy way of retrieving that data 🙂

you work for!

snippet of code reads the Windows operating system details, for example:

registry based on key timestamps (note that values do not have timestamps).

just about everything.

(https://www.signalwarrant.com/remote-computer-inventory-powershell/) This version uses the Get-CIMInstance CMDlet to get all the information from the WMI classes as opposed to the WMI CMDlets. I have also added some additional information that I thought was relevant. If you can think of anything else that may be good to add let me know, or submit a Pull Request on Github.

sometimes... That's not what you want. You could break your workstation with PowerShell code, and your workstation is not clean with all features installed, or settings enabled that your target systems don't. And that's where Visual Studio Code and its Remote SSH extension come into play. This blog post will show you how to combine that with a Windows Sandbox instance.

wondering what to do with the old stuff left over on the client computers. GPOs make deploying printers a snap, but when it comes to removing them, you are on your own.

files are being marked as read only after being copied from the ISO to a folder. Like the CustomSettings_DC01.ini shown in the below example. The Script To remove the Readonly attribute on all the files, you can [...]

admins to remove them from the image before deployment. However, you should avoid indiscriminately deleting them, as some system-relevant apps may be among them. PowerShell can be used to remove the crapware selectively.

redesigned context menu in File Explorer. However, these modifications are not merely aesthetic - they also restrict its functionality. You can deploy a registry key using Group Policy Preferences to restore the classic context.

deliberate decision to avoid having a dead link if the user uninstalled Windows Terminal. Don't even get me started.

file in Windows Sandbox (EXE, MSI, PS1, VBS, ZIP, Intunewin).

screen screenshot tat can be used both on Windows and on Windows PE.

to do this without GP or Intune.

PSEverything module to search Everything.

the available software on the machine. In the second post I have modified the script so that you can search for a particular application and get the necessary information without having to pass through the whole list. But [...]

PowerShell 7 installations. This should work for most people who install PowerShell 7 with the provided installer. But, as has been pointed out more than once to me, this won't detect any side-loaded or out-of-band installations. I made reference to this in the previous article. I think the best you can do is search the hard drive instances of pwsh.exe. But we don't want to do a brute-force recursive directory search. Instead, I'm going to use Get-CimInstance.

always a good start to pinpoint issues on your system. In this blog post, I will show you how to search, find easily, and export Windows Event Log information.

be such a pain in the ****?

colors are derived from the $env:COMPUTERNAME, so the colors would be different for each computer, but it would be the same color for the same computer name each time the script is ran.

you want to start it with certain options (Connect a folder on your harddrive or start without a network connection) and you have to create a custom configuration file (.wsb) with those options. This blogpost shows you how to start Windows Sandbox using PowerShell with parameters without the need of creating multiple configuration files.

Windows 10 start menu. So they MUST be easy to start. Not so much. They are designed to be started from the start menu only. Even with a shortcut on the desktop you DO NOT have enough information to create the required command line.

Store Apps, Windows 10 (OS itself), Visual Studio Community 2019, Chocolatey, Anaconda, MSYS2

control of driver updates. One frustration I've long had with drivers in Windows Update though is the naming - sometimes the names are quite indescript and it can be difficult to know which driver (or driver software) it actually is.

software packages from various sources, such as Winget, Chocolatey, and PowerShell Gallery. Let me show you UniGetUI's features and how it can help you quickly set up a new computer with all the essential software.

or a script. Unfortunately, no method covers all scenarios. PowerShell's package management, for example, is limited to the local computer, while WMI does not recognize all programs.

traditional Win32 applications or modern AppX packages. Since not every Win32 application can be removed without a little extra work, the module was designed to allow instructions for specific applications to be pulled from a JSON file.

tweaked my previous install a bit. One of the things you get when installing Windows again is a bunch of default apps. These apps are coming from the Microsoft Store. And not all of these apps will be used, so I decided to figure out how to de-install them.

drive for troubleshooting. The helpdesk must manually enter the 48-digit recovery password each time. However, this process can be automated by exporting the keys and using a script.

computers to 22H2 using the enablement package. Ninja has been having issues with getting all these computers patched, so wrote this to help bring all devices up to 22H2 which is the last serviced Windows 10 version until EOL.

Windows 10 or 11 media, for both x64 and ARM64 architectures.

Windows. It's not labeled. How do you determine the version of Windows on the installation media?

PowerShell to get a history of USB drive usage.

handful of a specific servers. The ask went something like this: "Hey Mike, can you find all the services configured to run as another user on a specific group of servers?"

various use cases in which you can use PsExec and PowerShell together, working as a team.

data should be handled and moved across. I would like to introduce you to a cheeky PowerShell script with an optional User Interface I created specifically for user profile migrations, but can also be used to backup and restore user.

want to get caught unaware of a 'disk full' situation. We all know where that situation leads - dismounted database, stopped services, inaccessible website, and the list goes on.

test VM for a customer if you want to have it up-to-date before going through the Windows Autopilot process, for example. In this blog post, I will show you how the module works with a few examples of how I use it.

and... It's still there, even in Windows Server 2022. I will show you what it is and how it works in this blog post.

client. Winget is a command line tool that provides a lot of different options

installs and uninstalls the supported (and unsupported) Redistributables. Use for local install, gold image creation and update, or importing as applications into the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, Microsoft Configuration Manager or Microsoft Intune. Supports passive and silent installs, and uninstalls of the Visual C++ Redistributables.

should be used in scripts)

recall that I used a PowerShell scheduled job an an event subscriber to monitor for file changes in key folders that I want to back up. I created the scheduled task to run at Windows startup and so far it appears to be working just fine. However, I did catch one instance where the scheduled task stopped. I didn't find any reason, although I didn't dig too deeply either. I simply restarted the scheduled task. But it got me thinking that since I'm relying on this task to log new and changed files, I need to make sure it is watching. In other words, I need to watch the watcher. This is the approach I took.

Zone.Identifier information for downloaded files, on Windows 10, which is stored in NTFS Alternate Data Streams (ADS) on each downloaded file, contains the URL from which the file came. Yes, the whole URL so could potentially be very useful and/or very embarrassing. It's this Zone.Identifier file that Windows Explorer checks when it puts restrictions on files that it deems could be unsafe because they have come from the internet zone.

aswell as perform various other changes to declutter the windows 10 experience.

VDI environment.

but that doesn't mean the device is actually usable.

correctly. Our goal is to make it easier to install software on Windows. We also recently released tab completion in PowerShell, and a feature toggle.

some general disk management concepts.

easier and quicker than before.

huge number of files such as photos and videos and finally a huge amount of storage space. Files are accidentally or deliberately moved from location to location without first considering that these duplicate files consumes more and more storage space. I want to change that with you in this blog post. We will search duplicate files and then move them to a different storage location for further review.

feedback provider plugin for PowerShell that leverages the Windows Package Manager to provide suggestions for packages to install when a native command cannot be found. The command-line predictor feature in PowerShell enables this module to display WinGet packages as predictive suggestions.

commont tasks that most will do anyway after a fresh install.

commont tasks that most will do anyway after a fresh install.

appears on the screen of a Windows device. They are designed to grab the user's attention without interrupting their workflow. The term "toast" is derived from the way these notifications resemble a slice of toast popping up from a toaster. Toast notifications [...]

updates and compress some of the larger updates to free up space on your server. A good way of doing this is to run a Powershell script which will take care of all your cleanup requirements and as we are using Powershell, we can even get it to send us an email once it is complete with the output information on what the script has managed to clean up.