ApexSQL Audit Is Reaching End of Life — Here’s Your Next Step

There is no a built-in way to launch a PowerShell script hidden: even if you run powershell.exe and specify -WindowStyle Hidden, the PowerShell console will still be visible for a fraction of a second. To launch PowerShell scripts hidden, you can use a VBScript,...

For a long time, the command-line utility systeminfo.exe provides a wealth of information about a computer and can return object-oriented results with a little trick: $objects = systeminfo.exe /FO CSV | ConvertFrom-Csv $objects.'Available Physical Memory' Advantages...

Creating a Simple Multi-Channel Chat Room with PowerShell Here’s a fun PowerShell script that you can use to create a simple multi-channel chat room. All you need is a network share where everyone has read and write permissions. The chat is file-based and makes use of...

It can be very useful to be able to convert an encrypted SecureString back to a plain text. This way, for example, you can use PowerShell’s “masked input” features. Simply ask for a SecureString, and PowerShell takes care of masking the user input. Next, take the...

If your script requires external binary resources such as picture files or DLLs, you can of course ship them together with your script. You could, however, also embed these binaries as text in your script files: Read the binary files as bytes Save the bytes as...

This is part 5 of our mini-series about the awesome and free “ImportExcel” PowerShell module by Doug Finke. Make sure you install the module before you play with this tip: PS> Install-Module -Name ImportExcel -Scope CurrentUser -Force Recap from Part 4: Displaying...

Checking Website Availability with a PowerShell Function In the previous example we created a small PowerShell function that checks web site availability, and as part of the test results, a HTTP response code was returned. Let’s check out how this numeric code can be...

The most widely known PowerShell hosts are certainly powershell.exe and powershell_ise.exe because they ship out-of-the-box. However, there can be many more (and hidden) PowerShell hosts running. Any software that instantiates the PowerShell engine is a PowerShell...

In the previous tip we used an old COM technique to display a pop-up box with a built-in timeout. That worked pretty well except that the dialog box can be covered under your PowerShell window at times. Keep PowerShell Dialog Boxes Always on Top With a little-known...

Why Some Web Requests Fail in PowerShell but Work in a Browser Sometimes, web requests that work fine in a browser do not seem to work well in PowerShell. For example, when you navigate to http://www.geocode.xyz/Bahnhofstrasse,Hannover?json=1 in a browser, you get...

In the previous tip we looked at the FileSystemWatcher object and how it can monitor folders for changes. To not miss any changes, however, an asynchronous approach is required which looks like this: $FileSystemWatcher = New-Object System.IO.FileSystemWatcher...

Each PowerShell host running PowerShell 5 or better opens a “named pipe” that you can detect. The code below identifies these named pipes and returns the processes exposing the pipes: Get-ChildItem -Path "\\.\pipe\" -Filter '*pshost*' | ForEach-Object { Get-Process...

Rather than calling functions recursively, you may at times want to use a Queue object that you can load with fresh tasks while you are unloading things that you have already processed. Searching a Filesystem Without Recursion Lee Holmes has recently posted the below...

Here is a PowerShell function called Lock-Screen that can lock the screen and prohibit user interaction. There can be a custom message, and the screen can be dimmed during lockout. Here is an example call: PS> Lock-Screen -LockSeconds 4 -DimScreen -Title 'Go away...