Mike Wilbur's Blog

Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK)

It's great to see powerful tools be made publicly available; winpe and imagex are powerful tools I've been using for some time to deploy systems and recover from hardware & software failures. Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) Overview The Windows

Updating a DataSet with Powershell and saving changes back to SQL

This example uses the AdventureWorks sample database. # get the dataset PS C:\demo> $ds = .\get-dataset.ps1 "select * from Production.ProductModel" -db adventureworks # write out xml from the instructions column into seperate files PS C:\demo> $ds

Capturing SQL Generated by SMO in Powershell

The following example uses the get-sqlserver.ps1 script in my search path. get-sqlserver.ps1: param ( $server = "." ) $null = [reflection.assembly]::loadwithpartialname( "microsoft.sqlserver.smo" ) new-object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server

EventTriggers

This could be usefull; I always like knowing about obscure commands that are on every box I work with. eventtriggers [ .exe ] /create [ /s Computer [ /u Domain \ User [ /p Password ]]] /tr TriggerName [ /l [ APPLICATION ] [ SYSTEM ] [ SECURITY ] [ "DNS

Connect to and Shadow the Console Session with Terminal Services

This KB article shows how you have two separate TS sessions connected to the console: How to Connect to and Shadow the Console Session with Windows Server 2003 Terminal Services

Remote Desktop shortcut keys

Remote Desktop has some really handy shortcuts that are documented right there in the help file: Shortcut key Description ALT+PAGE UP Switches between programs from left to right. ALT+PAGE DOWN Switches between programs from right to left. ALT+INSERT

Powershell script that can schedule itself to run later

From time to time I find it useful to schedule tasks to run on my machine. I often realize that many people are unaware that windows 2003 has a built in task scheduler; and even more of a rarity for them to be aware it can be managed via the command line.

Powershell 1 liner: Key Value pairs from text file to hashtable

Example Problem: You have a text file that contains key value pair and you want to use them as a hash table in powershell. Values.txt: key1=value1 key2=value2 key3=value42 One way to do it: PS C:\temp> gc values.txt | %{$h = @{}} {if ($_ -match "(.*)=(.*)")