{"id":1610,"date":"2014-04-14T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2014\/04\/14\/windows-8-1-and-the-land-of-forgotten-modules-part-1\/"},"modified":"2014-04-14T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2014-04-14T00:01:00","slug":"windows-8-1-and-the-land-of-forgotten-modules-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/windows-8-1-and-the-land-of-forgotten-modules-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows 8.1 and the Land of Forgotten Modules: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/b>: Explore and discover the additional Windows PowerShell modules in Windows 8.1.<\/p>\n

Honorary Scripting Guy, Sean Kearney, is here this week to have a little interesting fun. We’re going to dive undercover and take a look at some of the additional modules that are built-in to Windows 8.1 that you may not be aware of. Or possibly you were, but you’re like me—you looked at that big pile of modules and had one word to say: “Whoa!”<\/p>\n

Or if you were Ed, it would be, “Whoa! Dude!”<\/p>\n

But today I had some time to play about, and I decided to see what each module could do—or what it might do.<\/p>\n

Last week we played with some of the Network modules. I envy my former coworkers at McKesson Canada who probably get to use these every day now! To review the series, start with Windows Server 2012 R2 Network Cmdlets: Part 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today I opened the hood and found a few modules that I was curious about. There are some that you might not have realized there are now cmdlets for. For example, I did not know I could easily adjust the settings in the built-in Windows Search with Windows PowerShell. The module is called WindowsSearch<\/b>, and it has two simple cmdlets:<\/p>\n

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

Running the Get-WindowsSearchSetting<\/b> will show me how my Windows Search is presently configured.<\/p>\n

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

So if you needed to quickly tweak a computer to not get web results in the search, you can do this in Windows PowerShell:<\/p>\n

Set-WindowsSearchSetting –EnableWebResultsSetting $FALSE<\/p>\n

Or if you’d like to ensure that there are web results, but the Safe Search settings are cranked up for kids or employees who tend to play Angry Birds too much:<\/p>\n

Set-WindowsSearchSetting –EnableWebResultsSetting $TRUE –SafeSearchSetting Strict<\/p>\n

These settings are per user, so they don’t require elevation to run them. So it’s a pretty simple module, but it meets the task nicely.<\/p>\n

Digging down further…<\/p>\n

I didn’t realize we have a module for Windows Defender! There are actually quite a few cmdlets supplied with this one:<\/p>\n

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

Right off the bat, here are some pretty cool ones that you could leverage on a home computer. Let’s imagine you have Windows Defender configured just the way you like it on a computer. If only there was an easy way to carry those settings and put them on a new machine. Hmmmm…<\/p>\n

With Windows 8.1, we can execute the Get-MPPreference<\/b> cmdlet to see those settings:<\/p>\n

Get-MPPreference | Export-CLIXML C:\\DefenderSettings.XML<\/p>\n

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

On a new Windows 8.1 workstation at a client’s home, you could preconfigure Windows Defender by using your DefenderSettings.xml file to get your original settings:<\/p>\n

$Settings = Import-CLIXML C:\\DefenderSettings.XML<\/p>\n

Set-MPPreference –UILockdown $Settings.UILockdown<\/p>\n

Set-MPPreference –ExclusionPath $Settings.ExclusionPath<\/p>\n

Did you know you can list all of the viruses and malware that Windows Defender is aware of?<\/p>\n

Get-MPThreatCatalog | Format-Table<\/p>\n

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

You could export that list to a CSV file like this:<\/p>\n

Get-MPThreatCatalog | Export-CSV C:\\BadGuys.csv<\/p>\n

You could even force an immediate update of antivirus and force a scan on the workstation from Windows PowerShell with this module:<\/p>\n

Update-MPSignature<\/p>\n

Start-MPScan<\/p>\n

If I was managing small business machines, I can immediately see where this free module would be handy! I could have a script to do all the work, and then run this cmdlet at the end to give me a report:<\/p>\n

Get-MPComputerStatus<\/p>\n

Pop back in tomorrow. We’ll spend a little more time under the hood to see what other modules Windows PowerShell and Windows 8.1 have hidden for us!<\/p>\n

I invite you to follow The Scripting Guys on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send an email to The Scripting Guys at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then remember eat your cmdlets each and every day with a taste dash of creativity.<\/p>\n

Sean Kearney, <\/b>Windows PowerShell MVP and Honorary Scripting Guy <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: Explore and discover the additional Windows PowerShell modules in Windows 8.1. Honorary Scripting Guy, Sean Kearney, is here this week to have a little interesting fun. We’re going to dive undercover and take a look at some of the additional modules that are built-in to Windows 8.1 that you may not be aware of. Or possibly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[56,154,45],"class_list":["post-1610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-guest-blogger","tag-sean-kearney","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Summary: Explore and discover the additional Windows PowerShell modules in Windows 8.1. Honorary Scripting Guy, Sean Kearney, is here this week to have a little interesting fun. We’re going to dive undercover and take a look at some of the additional modules that are built-in to Windows 8.1 that you may not be aware of. Or possibly […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610","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\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610\/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=1610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}