Dreaming in PowerShell

Automating Office and Excel in PowerShell

Let's assume you'd like to write results directly to an Excel sheet , or you'd like to dynamically update Excel cells, or read Excel content into your script. In older scripting languages like VBScript, this was easy. Office has COM libraries...

Published Thu, Aug 19 2010 2:37 PM by Tobias

Filed under: Culture, Use-Culture, Excel, Office, TypeLibrary

Downloading Images from Webpages

In a training, recently a participant asked about an HTML parser to analyze and harvest data from web pages. Unfortunately, there is no .NET type for this so PowerShell can't help. Or can it? Well, as it turns out, there is a HTML parser after all...

Published Wed, Mar 17 2010 4:35 AM by Tobias

Filed under: HTML, COMObject, InternetExplorer.Application, getElementsByTag, Complete-BitsTransfer, Start-BitsTransfer, BitsTransfer

Are you using the correct PowerShell version?

Recently, when I was training a group of enterprise admins, a question came up: Why is PowerShell remoting not working on Windows XP? Well, it does! As it turned out, they had downloaded the "wrong" PowerShell version. How come? When you search...

Published Thu, Jan 21 2010 1:50 AM by Tobias

Filed under: V2, $psversiontable, Version, PowerShell, Download, CTP

1 equals "Running"? - Melting Integer and String Objects together

By coincidence, I stumbled upon an article in the PS team blog which talks about comparing different object types. It definitely is worth looking at, but let's take it a step further. Recently, while I was deserializing service objects, I found that...

Published Thu, Jan 07 2010 10:19 AM by Tobias

Filed under: Export-CliXML, Import-CliXML, Deserialized, Get-Service, Serialize, Override, toString, -eq, Integer, -like

Cancelling a Pipeline

Once a PowerShell pipeline runs, it runs. There is no way of cancelling it. This is bad news. Or is there a way? Runaway Pipeline Just imagine you are retrieving tons of data to find a piece of information. Once you found it, you do not need to retrieve...

Published Fri, Jan 01 2010 12:17 PM by Tobias

Filed under: Pipeline, Continue, Break, Stop-Pipeline

Part 1 - What's New In PowerShell V2: Computer Cmdlets

PowerShell V2 contains a lot of new cmdlets and has added many more useful parameters to existing cmdlets. In this series, we look at all the new things you can now do with PowerShell V2. How do I know which PS Version I run? It's pretty easy to find...

Published Mon, Sep 28 2009 4:03 AM by Tobias

Filed under: Stop-Computer, Restore-Computer, Reset-ComputerMachinePassword, Checkpoint-Computer, Get-ComputerRestorePoint, Enable-ComputerRestore, Restore, Remove-Computer, Test-ComputerSecureChannel, Restart-Computer, Add-Computer, Disable-ComputerRestore

Removing Private Key From Certificate

Ok, this may be not be the typical every-day question but I just had a friend ask how to remove a private key from a digital certificate. As it turned out, this is tricky. Accessing Certificates PowerShell does provide easy access to all of your installed...

Published Tue, Sep 08 2009 5:58 PM by Tobias

Filed under: Cert:, Certificate, CAPICOM, Private Key, hasPrivateKey

Test-Driving Remoting In Windows 7

Remoting is among one of the most popular and powerful new PowerShell V2 features. What this means is that starting with PowerShell V2 (and starting with Windows 7 only because downlevel OS will support V2 remoting only in a future update), you can connect...

Published Sat, Aug 29 2009 11:32 AM by Tobias

Filed under: Remoting, Enter-PSSession, Test-WSMan, Exit-PSSession, Set-WSManQuickConfig

Using PowerShell in Windows 7 - Part 1

Windows 7 is going to be the first operating system that actually ships with Windows PowerShell (rather than having to install PowerShell separately) and comes with the new PowerShell V2 . Enough great reasons to take a closer look. Ín this first...

Published Thu, Jul 16 2009 5:47 PM by Tobias

Filed under: Windows 7, Module, Get-Command, Get-Module, Import-Module

Embedding native commands

One little known fact is that you can use the PowerShell pipeline to actually feed information into a native command. Why would that be breath taking? Automating Native Commands Because there are tools like DiskPart . They are important but they only...

Published Mon, May 25 2009 12:13 AM by Tobias

Filed under: Write-Progress, DiskPart, Pipeline

Test driving Windows 7 RC and PowerShellPlus 3.0 on Virtual PC

Windows 7 RC is out, and finally a bug has been fixed that prevented PowerShellPlus from running. If you'd like to play with our brand new PowerShell Plus 3.0 on the brand new Windows 7 Release Candidate, here is what you need: First, get Windows...

Published Sat, May 02 2009 2:00 PM by Tobias Weltner

Filed under: Windows 7, VirtualPC

Using QuickClick Solutions in Beta2

PowerShell Plus Beta2 has a significant new feature: QuickClick solutions . Since it is new and pretty cool, I'd like to give you a quick walk-through. QuickClick Solutions are trees that can store either simple one-liner commands or complex scripts...

Published Mon, Mar 09 2009 10:16 AM by Tobias Weltner

Filed under: PowerShellPlus, QuickClick, Solution

XML Part 2: Write, Add And Change XML Data

In the previous post, I demonstrated how PowerShell handles XML data and how easy it is to load XML from a file or the Internet and then analyze its content. Today, I'd like to share how you can change and append XML data. Creating Sample XML I'd...

Published Mon, Feb 02 2009 3:11 AM by Tobias Weltner

Filed under: XML, Win32_UserAccount, User Account, Clone, Get-WMIObject

XML Part 1: Playing with RSS Feeds and XML Content

A lot of data these days is wrapped as XML, and up until now, handling XML data wasn't a piece of cake. PowerShell makes handling XML a lot easier. This is the first part of a little series about XML and PowerShell. We start with accessing XML documents...

Published Sat, Jan 17 2009 10:37 AM by Tobias Weltner

Filed under: XML, RSS, New-Object, Format-Table, Where-Object, Internet, Select-Object

Tipps & Tricks Using Compare-Object

Compare-Object is a very powerful Cmdlet that can compare different result sets. The funny thing is: when you try to use Compare-Object in simple scenarios, all works fine. Once you put it to work in production environments, it often fails. Here is why...

Published Fri, Jan 09 2009 1:47 AM by Tobias Weltner

Filed under: Diff, syncWindow, Monitor, Snapshot, Export-CliXML, Compare-Object, Import-CliXML

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