PowerShell oneliner to find empty groups in Active Directory
This one goes in the category of a ‘nice & clean’ environment, specifically your Active Directory. Get-ADGroup -Filter {GroupCategory -eq 'Security'} | Where-Object {@(Get-ADGroupMember $_).Length...
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PowerShell function to get time server NTP settings from clients
Some time ago I was asked to write a PowerShell script to do an inventory of the time server (NTP) configuration on clients. Today I was asked the same, so I grabbed my old script, expanded it a little...
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PowerShell – Error when you query Active Directory for the OperatingSystem...
Last week I posted a PowerShell function to get time server NTP settings from clients. Depending on how you use the script, you may encounter an issue which is not the cause of the script but...
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SCCM – Report all software in Add and Remove Programs for all computers
Today I was asked to create a report in SCCM / ConfigMgr that shows all installed products in Add & Remove Programs. My customer wanted to know all applications installed on all computers… Instead...
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Copy Active Directory group membership from user to user
This is something that has been done before, quite a lot actually. What I wanted to do was write a script to copy the group membership of user 1 to user 2. But… I also wanted the option to remove the...
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PowerShell function to get NTFS permissions on a folder for groups and users...
This script is something I’ve been playing with in my head for quite some time now. Today I found some time to do script this So, what are some of the use-cases? Documentation (project, operational)....
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PowerShell function to convert XLS files to XLSX
Migrations… always fun to do when you can automate them. Let’s say that you migrate from Office 2003 to Office 2010. You may want to convert your ‘old’ XLS files to the new XLSX format. But you would...
View ArticlePowerShell function to find orphaned GPT in the SYSVOL
A clean and structured Active Directory is what I always try to work towards. One of the things I find at many of my customers is a legacy in group policies. Sometimes it doesn’t seem that bad in the...
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What does a PowerShell function written by Microsoft look like?
This question lingered in my mind for a long, long time. Becaues my mean method of learning to script is: read script, understand it, know it… I see code, patterns in there, loops, methods, understand...
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I will be speaking at Experts Live on PowerShell DSC
On the 28th of November I will be speaking, together with Stefan Stranger (Microsoft PFE), at ExpertsLive in Zeist (The Netherlands) about PowerShell’s Desired State Configuration. Are you interrested...
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PowerShell function to find stale and old trusts in your Active Directory
Trusts… most of the times you create them and never look back… until you have to create a new one. So what about legacy/ancient trusts? Trusts you don’t need? Trusts that aren’t in use? Again a post...
View ArticlePowerShell function to report users in domain local groups
AGDLP… it’s an old principle. Almost as old as Active Directory itself. You put a User in a Global group, the Global group in a Domain Local group and you provide Permissions on a resource to that...
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PowerShell function to find groups with no users as members
Groups with no members in them are, in my opinion, a waste of a perfectly good object So here is a function to find groups that have no users and no groups as member… function Get-EmptyGroups { $Groups...
View ArticlePowerShell function to list users in Authoritative Groups in Active Directory
Thanks to Shay Levy for pointing me to the possibility to filter on the GroupType to get the authorative groups in Active Directory. Here’s a function you can use to list the users that are a member of...
View ArticleMemory requirements for Windows Server 2012 (R2)
This is all about installation vs a running installation within a virtual machine. When you install Windows Server 2012 (R2) you will need to configure 800MB+ of startup RAM. If you don’t, the...
View ArticleSet domain runas account for SQL Server Management Pack in SCOM
Last week the SCOM admin from my customer asked me to help out with a PowerShell command he was trying. A little background information: We introduced the SQL Server Management Pack in SCOM and chose...
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Get-InstalledUpdates – List all installed updates and hotfixes
I recently got the task to inventory all installed updates and hotfixes on a bunch of cluster nodes. Yes, I could have gone through ‘Add/Remove Programs’ and created a list by hand… right? Are you...
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Which servers have an Operations Manager client?
Some time ago I got asked to write some PowerShell code to list all servers which have an Operations Manager agent installed. So, how does one accomplish this? The nice and proper way would be to query...
View ArticleUse PowerShell and repadmin to get active directory replication status
The Active Directory replication status is about the first thing I check whenever I enter a project at a new customer. Why? You wouldn’t believe the problems they can cause and the time it can take to...
View ArticleCompare installed updates and hotfixes
Earlier this month I posted about a function that I wrote: Get-InstalledUpdates – List all installed updates and hotfixes In that post, I wrote a little extra code in order to compare the results...
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A PowerShell function to get the installed software
Earlier this month I posted about getting the installed updates and/or hotfixes. This got me thinking… what about installed software? If you want to compare servers to each other, installed software...
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A PowerShell function to compare installed software
Earlier this week I posted a fuction to get the installed software. Naturally the next step is to compare installed software over multiple targets once you’ve got the results of that function. So,...
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Get remote Best Practice Analyzer results through PowerShell
Today I received an email from a community member where he wrote that he was writing a PowerShell script that basically does the same thing at the Microsoft Best Practice Analyzer. Why? Couldn’t you...
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What is Project Possessod?
Last year I wrote a tweet about a new ‘secret’ PowerShell project I started working on. I’m happy to anounce that v1 of the script is almost ready and …. I’ll be showing it for the first time on the...
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Out of memory exception in PowerShell
When running scripts in a large environment, you could run into an exception in PowerShell telling you it’s out of memory. To get the value of the amount of memory available per shell, run the...
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A first glimpse at my Active Directory Health Check
Last week I presented at the Virtual PowerShell User Group about the big secret PowerShell project I’ve been working on (codename: possessod). As I wrote earlier: It’s an Active Directory Health Check....
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An Active Directory Health Check PowerShell script v1.0
This is a PowerShell script which offers an Active Directory Health Check. These checks are based on my personal best practices. Some of the checks may not be applicable to your environment. The...
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Where to find the latest version of my Healh Check PowerShell script(s)
As many of my readers now, last week I’ve finally released v1 of my AD Health Check PowerShell script. In the future newer versions will come out, with fixes and more checks. So, where can you find the...
View ArticleGet print server information via PowerShell
This weekend I found myself in a situation where I needed to find print server information, such as the default spool directory and restart job timeout value. You can use the System.Printing assembly...
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Check if a value is an ip address or not
Here’s an easy way to check if a value has the format of an ip address:
View ArticleGet flash version with PowerShell
Inventory of software is always fun to do. I found myself wanting to do an inventory of the versions of Flash that were installed on all systems, so I went to my favorite tool: PowerShell. When you...
View ArticleGet the process owner via PowerShell
Let’s say you’ve got an app that needs to be closed throughout your environment. If you can identify that app by a running process, you’ll probably want to know who has the application/process still...
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Extract features names from DeploymentConfigTemplate xml file
I am a lazy person. Trust me on this, it’s true. So whenever I can find an easy way to accomplish a goal, I do it. In this post I’ll show you how you can make use of Server Manager, export the...
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PowerShell DSC – Package ID unknown? Not a problem!
With PowerShell Desired State Configuration you’re able to install a package with the Package resource. However, you’ll need to provide a package ID. In the past I either created a snapshot of a VM,...
View ArticleA kickstarter project for a Windows Store alternative
Now this is a Kickstarter project I’m truly passionate about. The Windows Store, a beautiful concept but in my opinion open for improvement. Both in depth and in coverage. Chocolatey has started a...
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Octopus Deploy – The user name (UPN) could not be determined for principal
When you install Octopus Server, and you integrate with Active Directory for authentication, you may encounter an error stating that the UPN could not be determined for the account you’ve specified to...
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Find information about the local administrator account on remote systems with...
I wanted to get some basic information about the local administrator account on all my systems. Well, as it seemed my predecessor had a policy to manually rename the local administrator account, which...
View ArticleFind users currently logged on to remote systems
This is something I’ve been asked at multiple customers… can you find out who is logged on to a certain system? We have an IP address or system name, but have no clue where the device is so we want to...
View ArticleGet local groups on remote devices
Many of my customers have moved to, or are moving to, an environment where they use the groups already in the Windows operating system to provide permissions on those systems. So, they make a domain...
View ArticleUse PowerShell to list installed applications on remote Windows devices
This has been done a lot of times, by multiple people. I thought it was about time to share my function with you which allows you to list installed applications / programs on remote (Windows) devices....
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Looking back at an interview from 3 years ago
Back in 2012 I was interviewed by a company named FeatherNet, which you can find here. I would like to take a quote from this interview: I also think that the layering and modularization of all the...
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Script to remove invalid shortcuts from start menu
Last week I was asked to write a script that could be executed on desktops in the user context as part of a pre-migration script. The goal of the script was to check for, and remove, invalid shortcuts...
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A script to delete ConfigMgr client logs on remote devices
At one of my customers I’m part of a project team where we needed to start with a ‘fresh’ set of SCCM logs on the clients because that would make our troubleshooting a bit easier. So, here’s a handy...
View ArticleFind group recursive membership for current user
I’m currently working at a customer where group membership in AD is organized and maintained by another team (silo). Naturally, they tend not to communicate very well, as it is with most companies...
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You can trust gatherNetworkInfo.vbs
While tweaking my new laptop with a Windows 10 (latest build) installation, I found a little entry with SysInternals’ AutoRuns for a gatherNetworkInfo.vbs script. My first idea was: Malware! Then I...
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My predictions for 2016
Now that I see more and more people posting their predictions for 2016, I can’t be left behind So here are a few of my predictions, mainly data center and PowerShell focused. Please note that all of...
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PowerShell – Find disconnected RDP sessions
Here’s part of a script I’ve been working on to list the health of an RDP environment. In this scenario, part of it was to check for disconnected RDP sessions. Just to check, not to kill them...
View ArticlePowerShell – Find the appropriate network packet (MTU) size
While working with the SQL guys from my current customer, we found that we needed to know which MTU size we could configure. To understand what MTU size, or packet size, are and how they can impact SQL...
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PowerShell – Find the manufacturer, model and serial for your monitors
Sometimes I feel the need to do a small inventory. In this case, the need to do that with monitors found itself to the upper corners of my cranium. I wanted to get the manufacturer and model....
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Get-ADUser : Year, Month, and Day parameters describe an un-representable...
Today I’ve been working together with my colleague Irwin at a customer. We needed to do a small inventory off the active directory, amongs that was a list of user properties. When we used Get-ADUser,...
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