by the Secure Infrastructure team at Microsoft
Recently I was helping a colleague with a PowerShell script, things were going great until we ran the code and nothing was outputting. Now this wouldn't normally be a problem but we knew there should be output. So we started troubleshooting our code... For this blog I'm going to use some really basic examples but … Continue reading Troubleshooting Invisible / Hidden Characters in your PowerShell Code…
Continuing in our "Boldly Going" series I wanted to touch on a minor issue I've had when working with certain Hyper-V features. One of those endearing features/qualities is found when you want to delete a VM. Try this out in your environment on an expendable VM. Open your Hyper-V console, select the VM and choose … Continue reading Hyper-V On-The-Go – Reclaiming Drive Space
The Issue Recently I was at a customer that had a very strange and specific requirement. They wanted to query All File Type Extensions with a count on all machines in the environment. This was an environment with 30 000+ machines and they wanted it to run quickly and once off. The Investigation System Center … Continue reading Powershell – "Search and Count All File Extensions on Multiple Machines using Powershell"
While Linux maintains a strict case-sensitivity that you grow used to dealing with over time, Windows users get a little complacent, and often expect things to "just work." I ran into a problem this week with an XML config file that I expected certain nodes to have string values that I could replace for various … Continue reading TIL PowerShell .replace != -replace
Introduction Welcome to part 4 in my Active Directory Cleanup Series. This part is concentrated on pulling a report of Windows Operating Systems that are obsolete/unsupported. Using this report you can review them and decide if they should be removed or upgraded. Script 1: Long 1 liner. The following script was posted on one of … Continue reading PowerShell: Active Directory Cleanup – Part 4 – Unsupported Windows Operating Systems
In this blog post series, we will cover some useful scripts and methods which will help you to organize and maintain your GPOs, and clean up the mess surrounded in your Group Policy environment.
Introduction Hello everyone. Part 3 in my AD Cleanup series is stale computer objects. Stale computer objects are computers that haven't logged into the domain for a specified number of days. This script includes a NumberOfDays parameter that either you specify when calling the script or it defaults to 120 days during script execution. The … Continue reading PowerShell: Active Directory Cleanup – Part 3 – Stale Computer Objects
Introduction Hello again, Scott Williamson back with the next installment in the series "PowerShell: Active Directory Cleanup". For this installment we going to take a look at a script that finds computers that have a space in their name. Per RFC 1123 DNS host names cannot contain white space (blank) in their names. This is … Continue reading PowerShell: Active Directory Cleanup – Part 2 – Spacey Computer Names
Introduction Hello World, Scott Williamson Senior Premier Field Engineer here. As a PFE, I frequently work with customers who ask how to cleanup Active Directory of old objects and data. To assist them in automating cleanup I have written several PowerShell scripts, functions, and workflows that I want to share in this blog series. Duplicate … Continue reading PowerShell: Active Directory Cleanup – Part 1 – Duplicate Computers
Boldly Going - The Shakedown Cruise In an earlier blog I laid out some basics needed to build your own portable lab. I focused on the hardware needed and the considerations you need to keep in mind to ensure a successful effort. The hardware, however, is merely a tool (albeit a useful one) and needs … Continue reading Hyper-V On-The-Go – Enabling the Lab Engine