{"id":1575,"date":"2014-04-19T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-19T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2014\/04\/19\/weekend-scripter-use-powershell-to-hide-processes-in-windows\/"},"modified":"2014-04-19T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-19T00:01:00","slug":"weekend-scripter-use-powershell-to-hide-processes-in-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/weekend-scripter-use-powershell-to-hide-processes-in-windows\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Scripter: Use PowerShell to Hide Processes in Windows"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/b>: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about using Windows PowerShell to easily hide processes in Windows.<\/p>\n

Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. One of the things I used to have problems with when I was a network administrator, was running scripts on systems without a text box demanding attention from the user. In fact, the power users quickly discovered that if they simply clicked the big X button, they could exempt themselves from my scripts. I soon found out that there was a program I could use to hide the dialogs from the users. It worked, but the program was expensive, and it required a per-user license mode.<\/p>\n

I was recently in Amsterdam at the Dutch PowerShell User Group meeting. (They actually had four Windows PowerShell MVPs in attendance, including the Scripting Wife). A question came up from one of the attendees about hiding processes. I was quickly taken back to my time as a net admin. But now with Windows PowerShell, it is easy.<\/p>\n

Hiding in plain sight<\/h2>\n

One of the cool things about Windows PowerShell is that it has a number of built-in cmdlets for working with processes. To find these, I use the Get-Command<\/b> cmdlet, and look for a Noun<\/strong> of process<\/b>:<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> Get-Command -Noun process<\/p>\n

CommandType     Name                                               ModuleName<\/p>\n

———–     —-                                               ———-<\/p>\n

Cmdlet          Debug-Process                                      Microsoft.PowerShel…<\/p>\n

Cmdlet          Get-Process                                        Microsoft.PowerShel…<\/p>\n

Cmdlet          Start-Process                                      Microsoft.PowerShel…<\/p>\n

Cmdlet          Stop-Process                                       Microsoft.PowerShel…<\/p>\n

Cmdlet          Wait-Process                                       Microsoft.PowerShel…<\/p>\n

From the list, I can see that the cmdlet I want might be Start-Process<\/b>. So, I use the Get-Help<\/b> cmdlet to see if my guess is correct.<\/p>\n

Note<\/b>  In Windows PowerShell 3.0 and later, make sure that you open Windows PowerShell with Admin rights, and use the Update-Help<\/b> cmdlet to ensure you have access to the latest Help content.<\/p>\n

I use the Get-Help<\/b> cmdlet to look at information about the Start-Process<\/b> cmdlet. As shown in the following image, I see that a number of switches and parameters are available, and one is the –WindowStyle<\/b> parameter.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I am not sure what I can specify for a window style. So I use one of my favorite tricks. I give the parameter a bogus value, and look at the error message that returns. This technique is shown here:<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, I see that I can use Minimized<\/b> as a parameter value.<\/p>\n

Note <\/b> Keep in mind that in Windows PowerShell 4.0, I can use tab expansion to bring up the available options for a parameter.<\/p>\n

The command is shown here:<\/p>\n

Start-Process notepad -WindowStyle Hidden<\/p>\n

No output appears in the Windows PowerShell console. Also, no new icon shows up on the tool bar. There is no indication that the process is running.<\/p>\n

I can use the Get-Process<\/b> cmdlet as shown here to retrieve the process:<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

Cool, now that I can find the process, I can also terminate the process. To do this, I pipe the returned process object to the Stop-Process<\/b> cmdlet:<\/p>\n

Get-Process notepad | Stop-Process<\/p>\n

Neat. Now I can start a process hidden (or use any of the other Windows styles, such as minimized) if I need to do so.<\/p>\n

Hope you have a great weekend.<\/p>\n

I invite you to follow me on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.<\/p>\n

Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about using Windows PowerShell to easily hide processes in Windows. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. One of the things I used to have problems with when I was a network administrator, was running scripts on systems without a text box demanding attention from the user. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,87,2,3,4,61,45],"class_list":["post-1575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-operating-system","tag-processes","tag-running","tag-scripting-guy","tag-scripting-techniques","tag-weekend-scripter","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about using Windows PowerShell to easily hide processes in Windows. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. One of the things I used to have problems with when I was a network administrator, was running scripts on systems without a text box demanding attention from the user. In […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}