Category Archives: COM

Create a calendar item

Posted on Monday 12 September 2011 by

Continuing the occasional look at Outlook automation its time to see how we create a calendar item function new-calendaritem { param ( [string]$mailbox, [datetime]$start, [datetime]$end, [string]$subject, [string]$location, [string]$body ) $outlook = New-Object -ComObject Outlook.Application $folder = get-mailfolders | where {$_.Path … Continue reading →

Posted in COM, Networking, Outlook, PowerShell V2 | Leave a comment

Controlling Firewall Rules

Posted on Friday 2 September 2011 by

I decide that for this module I wanted some functions that control specific rule that I could be working with often e.g. Enable/Disable WMI rules and then I want a generic function for everything else. Lets start with some specifics. … Continue reading →

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Firewall rules (OK)

Posted on Thursday 1 September 2011 by

The really important thing about our firewall is the rules that are configured. function get-rule { [CmdletBinding()] param () BEGIN{}#begin PROCESS{ $fw = New-Object -ComObject HNetCfg.FwPolicy2 $fw.Rules | foreach { $profiles = @() $ruleprofile = $_.Profiles @(1,2,4, 1073741824) | foreach … Continue reading →

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Windows firewall

Posted on Wednesday 31 August 2011 by

I normally leave the Windows firewall enabled in my test environment. It ensures I don’t forget it when testing. My recent session for the TechEd:Australia PowerShell conference involved me disabling various firewall rules on the subject machine to set up … Continue reading →

Posted in COM, Firewall, PowerShell V2 | 2 Comments

Outlook Connector & mail folder item count

Posted on Saturday 30 July 2011 by

On my home laptop I use Live Mail to aggregate my hotmail accounts. On my travelling netbook I decided to try the Outlook Connector http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/microsoft-office-outlook-hotmail-connector-overview-HA010222518.aspx This add in enables you to access hotmail accounts from Outlook & because I’m using … Continue reading →

Posted in COM, Office 2010, PowerShell V2, Windows 7 | Leave a comment

IE history to CSV

Posted on Wednesday 29 June 2011 by

Back in April last year I wrote a post about viewing IE history http://msmvps.com/blogs/richardsiddaway/archive/2010/04/13/ie-history.aspx I had a comment left asking how this could be put into a CSV file We’ll start by turning the script into an advanced function that … Continue reading →

Posted in COM, PowerShell V2 | 3 Comments

Windows Updates: remote machines

Posted on Saturday 25 June 2011 by

  My main blog is now at http://msmvps.com/blogs/RichardSiddaway/Default.aspx but I also maintain http://richardspowershellblog.wordpress.com/ as a mirror and in case I want the two to diverge at some point. My recent posts on accessing Windows updates – especially when testing for … Continue reading →

Posted in COM, PowerShell V2 | 3 Comments

Windows updates: 4 tidy up get-update

Posted on Sunday 12 June 2011 by

Looking at the get-update function we created earlier I wanted to tidy it up a bit. 001002003004005006007008009010011012013014015016017018019020021022023024025026027028029030031032033 function get-update {[CmdletBinding()] param (  [switch]$hidden ) PROCESS{ $session = New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.Session$searcher = $session.CreateUpdateSearcher() # 0 = false & 1 = trueif ($hidden){ $result = $searcher.Search(“IsInstalled=0 and Type=’Software’ and ISHidden=1″ )}else { $result = $searcher.Search(“IsInstalled=0 and Type=’Software’ and ISHidden=0″ )} if ($result.Updates.Count -gt 0){ $result.Updates |  select Title, IsHidden, IsDownloaded, IsMandatory,  IsUninstallable, RebootRequired, Description}else { Write-Host ” No updates available”}  }#process … Continue reading →

Posted in COM, IT Security, PowerShell V2 | 5 Comments

Windows Updates: 3 Installing Updates

Posted on Saturday 11 June 2011 by

Now we have discovered the updates we have available we can think about installing them. 001002003004005006007008009010011012013014015016017018019020021022023024025026027028029030031032033034035036037 function install-update { $session = New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.Session$searcher = $session.CreateUpdateSearcher() $result = $searcher.Search(“IsInstalled=0 and Type=’Software’ and ISHidden=0″ ) if ($result.Updates.Count -eq 0) { Write-Host “No updates to install”}else {$result.Updates | select Title} $downloads = New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.UpdateColl foreach ($update in $result.Updates){ $downloads.Add($update)} $downloader = $session.CreateUpdateDownLoader()$downloader.Updates = $downloads$downloader.Download() $installs = New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.UpdateCollforeach ($update in $result.Updates){ if ($update.IsDownloaded){   $installs.Add($update) }} $installer = $session.CreateUpdateInstaller()$installer.Updates = $installs$installresult = $installer.Install()$installresult }   The function looks for non-hidden software … Continue reading →

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Windows Updates: 2 Installed updates

Posted on Saturday 11 June 2011 by

Testing for installed updates is a variation on what we saw last time. This will show updates that Windows updates has installed – Get-Hotfix will show all updates that have been installed. 001002003004005006007008 function get-installedupdate {$session = New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.Session$searcher = $session.CreateUpdateSearcher() $result = $searcher.Search(“IsInstalled=1 and Type=’Software’” ) $result.Updates | select Title, LastDeploymentChangeTime}   The … Continue reading →

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