@DoctorDNS

PowerShell Evangelist, PowerShell Community Blog

I'm just this old guy living in the English countryside. I know a bit about PowerShell and Windows. Love the Grateful Dead. Been excited about PowerShell since the first time Jeffrey Snover spoke about it in public. I have loved it, and the community ever since. So pleased to be able to give back here.

Post by this author

How to Preview PowerShell Scripts In PowerShell

December 13th, 2021
Q: When I use Windows Explorer and select a PowerShell script file - I do not see the script in the preview window. Can I fix that? A: You can make a few simple registry updates and do just what you want! At some time in the deep and distant past, Windows Explorer gained the preview pane feature. The idea is simple: you select a file in ...

How to Use $PSDefaultParameterValues

December 7th, 2021
Q: When I use cmdlets like and , how do I change default values of the Keep and Wrap parameters? A: Use the automatic variable. When I first discovered PowerShell's background jobs feature, I would use to view job output - only to discover it's no longer there. And almost too often to count, I pipe objects to cmdlet only to get truncated...

How to Use $FormatEnumerationLimit

November 5th, 2021
Q: When I format an object where a property contains more than 4 objects, I never see the extra property values. How can I fix that? A: Use the variable. This query is one I hear in many PowerShell support forums, and I have encountered this issue a lot over the years. What happens is that you issue a command to return objects, for example...

How to use the Secret modules

October 25th, 2021
Q: I have a bunch of scripts we use in production that make use of Windows credentials. In some cases, these scripts have an actual password in plain text, while others read the password from an XML file. Is there a better way? A: Scripts with high-privilege account passwords in plain text is not a good idea. There are several methods you can...

How to Make Use Of PowerShell Profile Files

September 21st, 2021
Q: I would like to personalize the way that PowerShell works. I have heard that I can use a thing called a profile to do this, but when I try to find information about profiles, I come up blank. There is no cmdlet, so I do not see how to create such a thing. Can you help me, please? A: Profiles are a powerful part of PowerShell and allow you...

How to Update or Add a Registry Key Value with PowerShell

July 30th, 2021
Q: I am having a problem trying to update the registry. I am using the New-ItemProperty cmdlet, but it fails if the registry key does not exist. I added the –Force parameter, but it still does not create the registry key. The error message says that it cannot find the path because it does not exist. Is there something I am not doing? I ...

How to Change the Start Page for the Edge Browser

June 21st, 2021
Q: How can I change the Edge startup page? A: You can change the start page easily using PowerShell. Edge and It's Start Page I am basing this article on the latest incarnation of the Edge browser, aka Edge Chromium. The settings in this article seem to work fine on the latest versions of Windows 10 and Server 2022. Other browsers can have ...

How to rename a NIC

June 13th, 2021
Q: Is there a simple way to rename a NIC, especially inside a Hyper-V VM? A: You can change the name of any Windows NIC using PowerShell - whether the NIC is in a physical host or a Hyper-V VM. NICS and NIC names One thing that can quickly become confusing when using Hyper-V with multiple VMs and VM Switches is how fast the network adapters...

How to send output to a file

May 24th, 2021
Q: Is there an easy way to save my script output to a text file rather than displaying it on screen? A: Of course - there are multiple ways to do just that! PowerShell and Output One of PowerShell's great features is the way it automatically formats output. You type a command - PowerShell gives you the output it thinks you want. If the ...

How Do I Discover Changes to an AD Group’s Membership

May 7th, 2021
Q: Is there an easy way to detect and changes to important the membership of AD Groups? A: Easy using PowerShell 7, WMI, and the CIM Cmdlets. WMI Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is an important component of the Windows operating system. WMI is an infrastructure of both management data and management operations on Windows-based ...