Monthly Archives: February 2010

PowerShell in Practice – February update

Posted on Sunday 28 February 2010 by richardsiddaway

The book is over half way through the author review process. This means that the editor has corrected my English and the technical reviewer has made his comments and I get to read all of this and revise as necessary. … Continue reading →

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User Group on Tuesday

Posted on Sunday 28 February 2010 by richardsiddaway

Don’t forget the User group Live Meeting on Tuesday 2 March at 7.30 GMT. Details from http://msmvps.com/blogs/richardsiddaway/archive/2010/02/13/ug-meeting-2-march-2010.aspx Technorati Tags: PowerShell,User Group

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Last Hotfix Install date

Posted on Saturday 27 February 2010 by richardsiddaway

I was thinking about testing machines for when they were last patched and remembered that Get-Hotfix displays the Installed date for patches.  Unfortunately, it isn’t available for all patches so we can’t get a guaranteed last date of patching by … Continue reading →

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PowerShell pack: Mount-SpecialFolder

Posted on Friday 26 February 2010 by richardsiddaway

Special folders are things like Favourites, Desktop and StartMenu folders.  The Mount-SpecialFolder mounts one specified special folder or all special folders.  The folders involved can be found by using the .NET enumeration used to discover them. PS>  [Enum]::GetValues([Environment+SpecialFolder])DesktopProgramsPersonalPersonalFavoritesStartupRecentSendToStartMenuMyMusicDesktopDirectoryMyComputerTemplatesApplicationDataLocalApplicationDataInternetCacheCookiesHistoryCommonApplicationDataSystemProgramFilesMyPicturesCommonProgramFiles There are … Continue reading →

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PowerShell pack: Get-FreeDiskSpace

Posted on Thursday 25 February 2010 by richardsiddaway

The Filesystem module has some interesting things for us.  The get-freediskspace function looked useful – so I tried it. It is safe so you can try this at home PS> Get-FreeDiskSpace Timestamp                 CounterSamples———                 ————–25/02/2010 22:13:44       \rslaptop01logicaldisk(harddiskvolume1)% free space :                          71.7171717171717 … Continue reading →

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Windows PowerShell Community Review

Posted on Wednesday 24 February 2010 by richardsiddaway

  Have you ever read Help that wasn’t really helpful? Here’s your chance to fix it. The Windows PowerShell documentation team and PowerShellCommunity.org jointly sponsor the Windows PowerShell Community Doc Review. As a member, you’ll get to read and comment … Continue reading →

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PowerShell pack: New-Zip

Posted on Monday 22 February 2010 by richardsiddaway

If all you want is an empty zip file for future use then import the filesystem module from the powershell pack and use New-Zip -Path test3.zip   In case you were wondering copy-tozip uses it in the background when it … Continue reading →

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PowershellPack: copy-tozip

Posted on Monday 22 February 2010 by richardsiddaway

The PowerShell pack is part of the Windows 7 resource kit and is also available as a separate download.  The Filesystem module contains the following functions: Copy-ToZipGet-DuplicateFileGet-FreeDiskSpaceGet-SHA1Mount-SpecialFolderNew-ZipRename-DriveResolve-ShortcutFileStart-FileSystemWatcher   Copy-ToZip does what it says and copies files into a .zip archive.  … Continue reading →

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Community

Posted on Sunday 21 February 2010 by richardsiddaway

I came across this post http://blogs.msdn.com/dtjones/archive/2010/01/06/what-makes-a-strong-community.aspx that talks about the SQL Server community – if you replace SQL Server with PowerShell I think the post is even more valid. According to the post the two things that make a strong … Continue reading →

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Secure Strings

Posted on Saturday 20 February 2010 by richardsiddaway

Secure Strings are a way to work with encrypted data – one of the common uses is to protect passwords used in scripts.  The way to use them may not be obvious at first sight.  I hope to clear some … Continue reading →

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