January, 2009

If you have used Windows Server 2008, probably you had experience with managing server features. Server Manager is a traditional way to install/uninstall server features. On Windows 2008 Server R2 Beta , Windows PowerShell provides a new approach to managing...

Have you had a file copy fail? Does that drive you crazy or what? How about when it is a REALLY big file and it takes a couple of hours and JUUUUUST before it finishes something happens to interrupt the transfer and you have to start all over again. Does...

James O’Neil just posted how to manage Windows Update with Windows PowerShell Here’s a quick sample of what he can do: Add-WindowsUpdate –Auto to download updates and reboot if needed, Set-WindowsUpdateConfig –n 4 –i to schedule updates (Including the...

Hello everyone, We are pleased to announce that the Beta release of Windows server 2008 R2 supports managing Remote Desktop services using PowerShell. You can now configure and manage all RDS role services and components using PowerShell. For example...

PowerShell remoting is built on top of Windows Remote Management (WinRM), which is Microsoft’s implementation of WS-Management protocol. You can use winrm.cmd command line tool to query and manage winrm settings. PowerShell V2 CTP3 contains a wsman provider...

Hi writers and consumers of buggy scripts. This post explains the basics of the Graphical Debugger in the ISE. There’s a lot of good stuff, with some tips and tricks. The debugger support got the cmdlets and user interface. The cmdlets include Enable...

On our internal discussion list, someone just asked about how to pass switch parameters from one function to another.  This person asked this as "Why can't [switch] parameters be passed as parameters?". My short answer was simple: "They...

There are so many powerful features in V2, it is hard to know where to begin. This one is going to blow to top of your head off when you understand what it enables you to do. In this blog, I talk about Proxy Cmdlets which is the ability for one Cmdlet...

In the previous example we learned how to create a colorized copy of console in HTML and RTF format. However, the output of these scripts cannot be readily used for pasting into web or word processing applications. To insert it into your article in MS...

Today let's talk about one of the cool new features of Windows PowerShell V2 - Interactive Remoting. Let’s start with an example: PS> $env:COMPUTERNAME # Check local computer name. VLADIMIA64 PS> Enter-PSSession Vladimia06 # Remote to other computer...

Windows PowerShell CTP3 has a lot of very cool things.  CTP2 introduced the Add-Type cmdlet, which allowed you to dynamically compile C# in PowerShell.  It was actually possible to use the CompilerParameters to Add-Type to make a console application...

You can have a lot of fun with PowerShell.  Makes sense right - we're busting our butts off and we get to define it so why wouldn't we make it fun? Your busting your butts off at your job as well so why shouldn't your tools be fun?  Right? In...

Seeing nicely formatted console examples in a previous post has inspired me to write a script that captures the console screen buffer directly from the Windows PowerShell console host. With this script you can make console "screen shots" to...

With the release of Win7/WS08R2 beta, we are officially in the end game of PowerShell V2.  This is the phase were we can only respond to customer feedback and we rely upon customer feedback to tell us whether and when we are ready to ship. ...

In the previous post we demonstrated how we can use console host API to capture screen buffer contents as text. But what if we want some colors. Would not it be nice to publish colorized copy of console in HTML or insert it as part of Microsoft Word document...

On the front page of MSN.com today, there’s details about a new worm, Conficker , that spreads using the good old fashioned autorun.inf tricks.  It infects USB drives so that, when you plug the drive into another computer, it automatically runs and...

Last Thursday, we had our first meeting of PowerShell Script Club on the Microsoft Campus. Script Clubs are really cool. They're kind of like a hands on lab with no set topic or teacher. You bring an idea for a script, and ask your fellow PowerShell users...

Shane Burton from Compellent just asked me to help him rename a drive with PowerShell. It's possible to rename drives using a couple of different WMI classes, Win32_Volume , and Win32_LogicalDisk . You change the drive by setting a property name on the...

[1/3/09 Update - the original link to the attachment containing this code was broken but is now fixed. Sorry. jps] It is hard to overstate how important Modules and Advanced Functions are. If you are a PowerShell user - you need to take the time to...

Tomorrow evening I'll be doing the Mind Of Root podcast with Steve Murawski to discuss WSMAN.  WSMAN is the new standard management protocol to talk to all sorts of heterogeneous devices and is the protocol that PowerShell Remoting is based upon...

Everyone needs to get good with Advanced Functions – this is the easiest path to the best semantics for everyone. In previous posts we’ve shown how you can add a few simple attributes and get a TON of stuff for free. There is a LOT more to advanced functions...

UPDATED Feb-03-2009: Lee Holmes has posted an updated version of the script which does a much better job of HTML copy-pasting. It can also produce line numbers and has a number of other improvements.   In the previous article we demonstrated how...

Today, on our internal discussion list, someone asked if there were any advantages to testing with PowerShell versus testing with C#. I was able to come up with 10 quick reasons to test with PowerShell: Being able to run command line programs easier within...

Dozens of people could write dozens of books on all of the cool stuff we improved in V2 of PowerShell.  One of the nice little things we did was give a more understandable API than Pipeline (which is the class you can use to invoke code from C# in...

Andy Schneider (from Get-PowerShell.com ) recently asked me how he could make sure that everyone at Avanade could get a consistent set of modules. I run into a somewhat similar problem here at Microsoft, where I want to take scripts I've built to work...