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May 2011 - Power Tips

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  • Use WMI to Create Hardware Inventory

    You can use Get-WMIObject to create a high-level hardware report. Instead of submitting a specific device class name, you should use a generic device class that applies to all hardware devices: PS > Get-WmiObject -Class CIM_LogicalDevice | Select-Object...

  • Remove Keys From a Hash Table

    Once you create a hash table, it is easy for you to add new key-value pairs like this: PS > $myHash = @ {} PS > $myHash . Name = ' Tobias ' PS > $myHash . ID = 12 PS > $myHash . Location = ' Hannover ' PS > $myHash Name...

  • Copy Registry Hives

    You can use Copy-Item to quickly copy entire structures of registry keys and sub-keys in a matter of milliseconds. Take a look at this example – it creates a new registry key in HKCU and then copies a key with all of its values and sub-keys from...

  • Getting Full Admin Privileges

    You may sometimes get "Access Denied" exceptions, even though you have Admin privileges and used an elevated shell. For example, this can hit you when you are trying to enable security-relevant PowerShell settings, such as enabling PowerShell...

  • RegEx Magic

    The [RegEx] type has a method called Replace(), which can be used to replace text by using regular expressions. This line would replace the last octet of an IP address with a new fixed value: PS > [ Regex ] :: Replace ( ' 192.168.1.200 ' ,...

  • Find Dependent Services

    If you would like to check the implications of stopping a service, you should have a look at its dependent services: ( Get-Service spooler ) . DependentServices Or use Select-Object: get-service Spooler | Select-Object -expand DependentServices To stop...

  • Restart required

    Check out this line to determine when an installation required a system restart: Get-EventLog -InstanceId 1038 -LogName Application | ForEach-Object { $i = 1 | Select-Object Date , Product , Version , Company; ` $i . Date = $_ . TimeWritten ; $i . Product...

  • Finding multiple RegEx matches

    In a previous tip, you learned that Select-Object can find multiple matches. Here is a function called matches. You can submit a regular expressions pattern and all text piped into matches will be matched: $pattern = ' \b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]...

  • Find multiple matches

    When you want to find matches based on regular expressions, PowerShell will only support the -match operator which finds the first match. There does not seem to be a -matches operator that returns all matches. You can use Select-Object like so to find...

  • Translate EventID to InstanceID

    Sometimes, you may need to have the event ID for a system event, though what you really need is the instance ID. For example, Get-EventLog will only support instance IDs, but no event IDs. Here is a function that can translate event IDs into instance...

  • Windows license validation

    Search for the appropriate events in your event log to discover when Windows has validated your license: get-eventlog -LogName Application -InstanceId 1073745925 | Select-Object TimeWritten , Message ReTweet this Tip!

  • Analyze automatic defragmentation

    Check out this line to visualize when your system defragmented your hard drives: get-eventlog -LogName Application -InstanceId 258 | ForEach-Object { $i = 1 | Select-Object Date , Type , Drive; ` $i . Date = $_ . TimeWritten ; $i . Type , ` $i . Drive...

  • Find system restore points

    Windows Update and Software installations will frequently create system restore points. Run this to get a list of such events: Get-EventLog -LogName application -InstanceId 8194 | ForEach-Object { $i = 1 | Select-Object Event , Application; ` $i . Event...

  • Secret history shortcut

    PowerShell will keep a history of the commands you entered and then you can list the history with Get-History, configuring the maximum length of that history with $MaxHistoryCount. This will tell PowerShell to keep the last 1,000 command lines in your...

  • Error handling for native commands

    When you need to handle errors created by native commands, you can use a wrapper function like Call. It will automatically discover when a native command writes to the error stream and return a warning: function Call { $command = $Args -join " "...
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