{"id":4012,"date":"2013-03-17T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-17T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2013\/03\/17\/weekend-scripter-use-powershell-to-configure-a-new-laptop\/"},"modified":"2013-03-17T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-17T00:01:00","slug":"weekend-scripter-use-powershell-to-configure-a-new-laptop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/weekend-scripter-use-powershell-to-configure-a-new-laptop\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Scripter: Use PowerShell to Configure a New Laptop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/strong>: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about using Windows PowerShell to configure a new laptop.<\/p>\n

Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. WooHoo! My new laptop arrived. Oh, no…I now have a lot of work to do to install and configure Windows 8 on it. You see, I never, never simply turn on and use a new laptop—that is not the way I operate. I always do a fresh installation. I am not saying one needs to always do this, but I like to know what is going on and make my own decisions. So here I am with a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n

Setting up the new laptop<\/h2>\n

A while back I began working on a new computer deployment module that helps me configure a number of things that simply irate me about default installs. Today I am going to discuss a few types of things that I need to configure.<\/p>\n

I do not want to defrag my SSD drive<\/h3>\n

This one is easy. In Windows 8, there is a Scheduled Task module, and all I need to do is disable one scheduled task. When I first tried the command, I received the following error message:<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName *defrag* | Disable-ScheduledTask<\/p>\n

Disable-ScheduledTask : Access is denied.<\/p>\n

At line:1 char:40<\/p>\n

+ Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName *defrag* | Disable-ScheduledTask<\/p>\n

+                                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<\/p>\n

    + CategoryInfo          : PermissionDenied: (PS_ScheduledTask:Root\/Microsoft\/..<\/p>\n

   .S_ScheduledTask) [Disable-ScheduledTask], CimException<\/p>\n

    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : HRESULT 0x80070005,Disable-ScheduledTask<\/p>\n

When I started Windows PowerShell with Admin rights, the command came off without a hitch as shown here.<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName *defrag* | Disable-ScheduledTask<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TaskPath                                       TaskName                          Sta<\/p>\n

                                                                                 te<\/p>\n

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

\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Defrag\\                     ScheduledDefrag                   Dis<\/p>\n

I do not want to hibernate<\/h3>\n

Windows 8 has a cool feature called Fast Start. Unfortunately, I have a scavenged SSD in my laptop that is really small, so I cannot afford the disk space of Hiberfile.sys. Anyway, guess what? Windows 8 on an SSD boots up pretty quickly anyway. So this is a simple one-line command using the PowerCfg command-line tool.<\/p>\n

Powercfg \/H OFF<\/p>\n

Note<\/strong>   This command also requires Admin rights. If you run it without Admin rights, the following error arises:<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> powercfg \/H OFF<\/p>\n

An unexpected error condition has occurred. Unable to perform operation. You may not have permission to perform this operation.<\/p>\n

I want to manage my own page file<\/h3>\n

If I use Get-CimInstance<\/strong> to query for instances of Win32_PageFileSetting, guess what? It returns nothing—not a thing. There is not an instance of Win32_PageFileSetting because Windows is managing the page file.<\/p>\n

Disable auto management of the page file<\/strong><\/h4>\n

So the first thing I need to do is to turn off auto management of the page file. I use the Win32_ComputerSystem WMI class to do this. Here is the command.<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> Set-CimInstance -Query “Select * from win32_computersystem” -Property @{autom<\/p>\n

aticmanagedpagefile=”False”}<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> Get-CimInstance win32_PageFileSetting<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

                 MaximumSize Name                        Caption<\/p>\n

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

                           0 C:\\pagefile.sys             C:\\ ‘pagefile.sys’<\/p>\n

Specify the size of the page file<\/strong><\/h4>\n

To set the size of the page file, I can now use the Set-CimInstance<\/strong> cmdlet, and set the size by using the Win32_PageFileSetting cmdlet. Here is the script I used.<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> Set-CimInstance -Query “Select * from win32_PageFileSetting” -Property @{Init<\/p>\n

ialSize=3072;MaximumSize=3072}<\/p>\n

It took a few times before I came up with the right combination. In the end, I looked up the Win32_PageFileSetting WMI class<\/a> on MSDN, and I found that it wants the values in megabytes.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/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<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about using Windows PowerShell to configure a new laptop. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. WooHoo! My new laptop arrived. Oh, no…I now have a lot of work to do to install and configure Windows 8 on it. You see, I never, never simply turn on and use […]<\/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":[16,340,31,417,3,61,45],"class_list":["post-4012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-desktop-management","tag-general-mgmt-tasks","tag-operating-system","tag-page-files","tag-scripting-guy","tag-weekend-scripter","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Summary: Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, talks about using Windows PowerShell to configure a new laptop. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. WooHoo! My new laptop arrived. Oh, no…I now have a lot of work to do to install and configure Windows 8 on it. You see, I never, never simply turn on and use […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4012","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=4012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4012\/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=4012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}