Monthly Archives: November 2016

Conference–time to book

Posted on Wednesday 30 November 2016 by richardsiddaway

Registration is open for the PowerShell Summit (USA) and PowerShell Conference (Europe). Now is an excellent time to decide which one you’re going to attend next year. If you’re serious about PowerSHell you should be at one of these events. … Continue reading →

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PowerShell finally the de facto shell

Posted on Friday 18 November 2016 by richardsiddaway

After 10 years PowerShell has become the de facto shell for Windows! Windows Insider Preview build 14971 released yesterday uses PowerShell instead of cmd.exe as the default shell in Start Menu or File Explorer. See https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/11/17/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-14971-for-pc/#66Smq5KicvsTBzld.97 for this and other … Continue reading →

Posted in Powershell, Windows 10 | Leave a comment

Changing the samAccountName

Posted on Friday 18 November 2016 by richardsiddaway

I was recently asked how the samAccountName – also referred to as the login id – could be changed. First lets look at an account: PS C:\Scripts> Get-ADUser -Identity ‘FredFox’ DistinguishedName : CN=FOX Fred,OU=UserAccounts,DC=Manticore,DC=org Enabled           : True GivenName         : Name              … Continue reading →

Posted in PowerShell and Active Directory | Leave a comment

New PowerShell console on Server Core

Posted on Thursday 17 November 2016 by richardsiddaway

Server Core is great for reducing the footprint of your VMs – Nano server is smaller but it can’t be a domain controller One draw back to server core is that you only get a single console. If you hang … Continue reading →

Posted in Powershell, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016 | Leave a comment

Creating test accounts in Active Directory

Posted on Thursday 17 November 2016 by richardsiddaway

There’s often a need to create test accounts in AD. You may want to create a a set of test accounts or if you have a demo/test lab you may need accounts in that. Creating the names for the accounts … Continue reading →

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Exploring PowerShell automation

Posted on Wednesday 16 November 2016 by richardsiddaway

My PowerShell books have all been published by Manning, A while back they asked me to put together a selection of extracts that show the depth and breadth of PowerShell. Its now available – for free – https://www.manning.com/books/exploring-powershell-automation The book … Continue reading →

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PowerShell 10 year anniversary videos

Posted on Tuesday 15 November 2016 by richardsiddaway

Yesterday was the PowerShell 10 year anniversary event – broadcast live on channel 9 The session recordings are available https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/PowerShell-Team/PowerShell-10-Year-Anniversary?sort=status&direction=desc

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Hyper-V book

Posted on Friday 11 November 2016 by richardsiddaway

I’ve been working with Andy Syrewicze on Learn Hyper-V in a Month of Lunches. Its now available in Manning’s Early Access program (MEAP) https://www.manning.com/books/learn-hyper-v-in-a-month-of-lunches Until 14 November 2016 you can get the MEAP for half price using code mlsyrewicze

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Creating a new AD forest

Posted on Saturday 5 November 2016 by richardsiddaway

As I’ve completely rebuilt my demo/lab machine I need to re-create the Active Directory This is now so simple even on a server core machine First install the roles and features needed Add-WindowsFeature -Name AD-Domain-Services, RSAT-AD-PowerShell, DNS, RSAT-DNS-Server, DHCP, RSAT-DHCP … Continue reading →

Posted in PowerShell and Active Directory, Windows Server 2016 | Leave a comment

ComputerName parameters for CIM and WMI cmdlets

Posted on Friday 4 November 2016 by richardsiddaway

Accessing a remote system and running Get-WmiObject -ClassName Win32_LogicalDisk -ComputerName $computer or Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_LogicalDisk -ComputerName $computer is a standard approach. If you’re creating a function with that code in you may put the local machine as a default parameter: … Continue reading →

Posted in PowerShell and CIM, PowerShell and WMI | Leave a comment