Monthly Archives: October 2011

Reading the hosts file–revised

Posted on Monday 31 October 2011 by richardsiddaway

Quick revision to the post on reading the hosts file http://msmvps.com/blogs/richardsiddaway/archive/2011/10/23/reading-the-hosts-file.aspx. I wanted to be able to display the whole file function get-hostfilecontent { param ([switch]$all) $file = Join-Path -Path $($env:windir) -ChildPath “system32\drivers\etc\hosts” if (-not (Test-Path -Path $file)){ Throw “Hosts … Continue reading →

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Multiple value query in WQL

Posted on Monday 31 October 2011 by richardsiddaway

A simple query that demonstrates how to query for multiple values. We want to stop the running services that are running where the names a like BITS and WinRm Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Service -Filter “State=’Running’ AND Name LIKE ‘%BITS%’ OR Name … Continue reading →

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Logging non-contactable systems

Posted on Monday 31 October 2011 by richardsiddaway

In this post – http://msmvps.com/blogs/richardsiddaway/archive/2011/10/23/1760058.aspx – I showed how to get the date of the last update applied to a system.  A comment was posted asking how to log machines that can’t be contacted “.”, “rslaptop01”, “200.0.0.1” | foreach { … Continue reading →

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Clearing hosts file

Posted on Sunday 30 October 2011 by richardsiddaway

We seen how to delete a single entry from the hosts file – this is how we clear all entries function clear-hostfilecontent { [CmdletBinding()] param () $file = Join-Path -Path $($env:windir) -ChildPath “system32\drivers\etc\hosts” if (-not (Test-Path -Path $file)){ Throw “Hosts … Continue reading →

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PowerShell, Storage, WMI and Windows Server 8

Posted on Wednesday 26 October 2011 by richardsiddaway

A must read if you are interested in any of these http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2011/10/14/windows-server-8-standards-based-storage-management.aspx   WMI is getting everywhere these days – better learn it quick

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Remove a host file record

Posted on Wednesday 26 October 2011 by richardsiddaway

Next up is removing a record from a hosts file function remove-hostfilecontent { [CmdletBinding()] param ( [parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [ValidatePattern(“\b\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\b”)] [string]$IPAddress, [parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [string]$computer ) $file = Join-Path -Path $($env:windir) -ChildPath “system32\drivers\etc\hosts” if (-not (Test-Path -Path $file)){ Throw “Hosts file not found” } … Continue reading →

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Minor rant

Posted on Tuesday 25 October 2011 by richardsiddaway

Why do software suppliers – Adobe with Acrobat Reader & Oracle with Java are the worst culprits – insist on trying to install their browser toolbar & change my default search engine?? What’s worse is that they make the default … Continue reading →

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Hosts file – add a record

Posted on Monday 24 October 2011 by richardsiddaway

We’ve seen how to read the Hosts file – this is how we add a record function add-hostfilecontent { [CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess=$true)] param ( [parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [ValidatePattern(“\b\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\b”)] [string]$IPAddress, [parameter(Mandatory=$true)] [string]$computer ) $file = Join-Path -Path $($env:windir) -ChildPath “system32\drivers\etc\hosts” if (-not (Test-Path -Path $file)){ … Continue reading →

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PowerShell and WMI – new MEAP release

Posted on Monday 24 October 2011 by richardsiddaway

Four new chapters have been added to the MEAP  (early access) for PowerShell and WMI Chapter 14 – Users and security Chapter 15 – Logs, jobs, and performance Chapter 16  – Hyper-V Chapter 17 – Windows Remote Management   Chapter … Continue reading →

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Reading the hosts file

Posted on Sunday 23 October 2011 by richardsiddaway

Normally I ignore the Hosts file but my development laptop isn’t a member of my test domain – a number of reasons for this which I won’t go into. This means that when I want to RDP to a machine … Continue reading →

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