Since my boss decided to switch from cmd.exe to PowerShell (yay!), I’ve been working on setting up a set of standardized profile scripts for everyone.  One of his first questions was how to change the prompt.  Since we’re using the PowerShell Community Extensions, we’ve been not only learning PowerShell but also the community extensions.  One [...]

I’ve been using the Community Extensions for PowerShell for some time now but for various reasons haven’t had the time to really dive in and learn it (or PowerShell) the way I’d like.  My company (well, the IT department at my company) is now standardizing on using PowerShell in place of cmd.exe and using the [...]

I’m working little-by-little towards using PowerShell as my primary command shell instead of cmd.exe.  I’m still a ways away, but PowerShell Community Extensions takes me a bit closer to my goal.  Here’s a description from their web site: PowerShell Community Extensions (PSCX) is aimed at providing a widely useful set of additional cmdlets, providers, aliases, filters, [...]

Table of contents for Intro to PowerShellGetting PowerShellBasic PowerShell ConceptsCommonly Used CmdletsPowerShell Scripts and ProfilesUsing PowerShell types with commands and variablesError handling in PowerShell scriptsCalling static methods PowerShell is extremely flexible in what it allows you to do, even allowing you to call static methods on just about any class in just about any assembly.  [...]

Table of contents for Intro to PowerShellGetting PowerShellBasic PowerShell ConceptsCommonly Used CmdletsPowerShell Scripts and ProfilesUsing PowerShell types with commands and variablesError handling in PowerShell scriptsCalling static methods When writing a PowerShell script, often you want to control what happens when an error occurs.  There are several mechanisms available, two of which I’ll describe here. $ErrorActionPreference variable The [...]

Table of contents for Intro to PowerShellGetting PowerShellBasic PowerShell ConceptsCommonly Used CmdletsPowerShell Scripts and ProfilesUsing PowerShell types with commands and variablesError handling in PowerShell scriptsCalling static methods When executing a command in PowerShell that expects a non-string argument, sometimes you need to specify more than just the string representation of the parameter.  Here is an [...]

Table of contents for Intro to PowerShellGetting PowerShellBasic PowerShell ConceptsCommonly Used CmdletsPowerShell Scripts and ProfilesUsing PowerShell types with commands and variablesError handling in PowerShell scriptsCalling static methods Each time you start up PowerShell, your session is set to an initial state.  Any changes you made in previous PowerShell sessions (with a few exceptions) are not [...]

Table of contents for Intro to PowerShellGetting PowerShellBasic PowerShell ConceptsCommonly Used CmdletsPowerShell Scripts and ProfilesUsing PowerShell types with commands and variablesError handling in PowerShell scriptsCalling static methods The following cmdlets provide functionality that you may find yourself using on a regular basis.  It’s also likely that you’ll use some of them without knowing it as [...]

Table of contents for Intro to PowerShellGetting PowerShellBasic PowerShell ConceptsCommonly Used CmdletsPowerShell Scripts and ProfilesUsing PowerShell types with commands and variablesError handling in PowerShell scriptsCalling static methods Although PowerShell provides access to the commands and applications available in cmd.exe in a fairly transparent way, there are still a lot of differences which means there is [...]

Table of contents for Intro to PowerShellGetting PowerShellBasic PowerShell ConceptsCommonly Used CmdletsPowerShell Scripts and ProfilesUsing PowerShell types with commands and variablesError handling in PowerShell scriptsCalling static methods When I worked at Microsoft I spent over a year working with Windows PowerShell (called Monad or Microsoft Shell (MSH) at the time).  PowerShell is a truly wonderful [...]