UK PowerShell UG–30 June 2011

The rescheduled UG session (via Live Meeting) on using Office products with PowerShell is tomorrow. Details from

http://msmvps.com/blogs/richardsiddaway/archive/2011/06/21/rescheduled-ug-meeting.aspx

Network Connection Ids

Yesterday I was looking at changing a Network connection id (the name that shows in Network and Sharing Center when you look at the adapters). I kept getting an error – either COM or number of arguments depending if I was running locally or remotely.

I eventually realised that I must be using a connection id that already existed in the Registry.  I tracked them down to

HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

This works for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2. Please check for other Windows versions.

This produces a bunch of subkeys of the form

{F913D3B9-DBE4-455C-8926-10E24AB4E68A}

Each of these has a subkey Connection with a value of Name that we are interested in

function get-Registryconnectionid{             
[CmdletBinding()]             
param (             
   [string]$computer="."             
)             
BEGIN{}#begin             
PROCESS{            
            
Write-Verbose "Reading registry keys for IDs"            
$HKLM = 2147483650            
$key = "SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}"            
$reg = [wmiclass]'\\.\root\default:StdRegprov'            
$subkeys = $reg.EnumKey($HKLM, $key)            
            
            
foreach ($name in $subkeys.snames){            
  if ($name -eq "Descriptions"){Continue}            
  $conkey = "SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Network\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\$name\Connection"            
  Write-Debug $conkey            
              
  $cvalue = "Name"            
  $id = $reg.GetStringValue($HKLM, $conkey, $cvalue)  ## REG_SZ            
              
  $ivalue = "DefaultNameIndex"            
  $index = $reg.GetDwordValue($HKLM, $conkey, $ivalue)  ## REG_DWORD            
  $connection = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property @{            
       Index = $index.uValue            
       Connection = $id.sValue            
    }            
  $connection              
}            
            
            
}#process             
END{}#end            
            
<# 
.SYNOPSIS
Retrieves network connection ids 

.DESCRIPTION
Retrieves network connection ids held in the registry.
This includes current and previous ids.

.PARAMETER  Computer
Computer name

.EXAMPLE
get-Registryconnectionid

.EXAMPLE
get-Registryconnectionid -computer server02

#>            
            
}

This uses the standard WMI methods to read a local or remote registry

The corresponding current values are given by

Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_NetworkAdapter | select NetConnectionId, Index

The two index values are not related

Quick Tip: Discovering service start accounts

Do you know which accounts are used to start the services running on your machines? if you need this information try:

Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Service | select Name, DisplayName, StartName

For a remote machine this becomes

Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Service -ComputerName Win7 | select Name, DisplayName, StartName

And for testing which services are started by a specific account use:

Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Service -ComputerName Win7 | where {$_.StartName -eq ‘NT Authority\LocalService’} | select Name, DisplayName, StartName

I wanted to use a WMI filter instead of Where-Object but it didn’t want to work

Monitor brightness–or not

In this post

http://msmvps.com/blogs/richardsiddaway/archive/2011/06/26/1795135.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

I discussed using WMI to check the monitor’s brightness.  Further investigation has shown that not all monitors support the interface to WMI so it is a bit of trial and error to check if it does work on your machine

Read the Scripting Guy Blog

I had the pleasure of meeting Microsoft’s Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson and his charming wife at the recent PowerShell Deep Dive. As well as being very nice guy Ed  also has a huge depth of knowledge on scripting in general and PowerShell in particular. His Hey, Scripting Guy! blog is one of the few I read on a regular basis. I might not always agree with Ed but he makes me think about some of the things I have come to take for granted about PowerShell.

If you don’t already read this blog now would be a good time to start – Ed is just starting a series about us stopping writing PowerShell scripts!!!  http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2011/06/25/don-t-write-powershell-scripts.aspx.

No, I’m not going to tell you any more – go and read it and the subscribe to the RSS feed for the rest of the posts in the series.

PowerShell Basics: Loops

A loop is used to repeat one or more commands a certain number of times or while a condition is true.  There are a number of ways of generating a loop in PowerShell. These examples show the basic structure of each loop type.

1..10 | foreach-object {$_}            
1..10 | foreach {$_}            
            
$xs = 1..10            
foreach ($x in $xs){$x}            
            
for ($i=0; $i -le $($xs.length-1); $i++){$xs[$i]}            
            
$i = 0            
while ($i -le $($xs.length-1)){$xs[$i]; $i++}            
            
$i = 0            
do {$xs[$i]; $i++} while ($i -le $($xs.length-1))            
            
$i = 0            
do {$xs[$i]; $i++} until ($i -gt $($xs.length-1))

Foreach can be an alias of foreach-object is its on the pipeline or a command to iterate through a collection of objects if its a standalone key word

The do loop has two structures depending on how you want to test the terminating condition.

Experiment with these structures so you understand the implications.

I tend to try and use them in the following order of preference:

• foreach-object
• foreach (keyword)
• for / while
• do

root\wmi–set monitor brightness

Oddly the methods for changing the brightness aren’t on the WmiMonitorBrightness we get a separate class with the methods. This function can be used to set the brightness

function set-monitorBrightness {
[CmdletBinding()]
param (
[ValidateRange(5,20)]
[int]$timeout=5,
 
[ValidateRange(0,100)]
[int]$brightness
)
$monitors = Get-WmiObject -Namespace root\wmi -Class WmiMonitorBrightnessMethods

foreach ($monitor in $monitors){
  $monitor.WmiSetBrightness($timeout, $brightness)  
}    
}

Timeout is in seconds and is the time the change takes.  Set to 20 and watch a slow change

Brightness is the % brightness setting. The system will set the brightness to the nearest level available (see previous post)

root\wmi – Monitor brightness

The monitor brightness can be discovered like this

function get-monitorBrightness {

$monitors = Get-WmiObject -Namespace root\wmi -Class WmiMonitorBrightness

foreach ($monitor in $monitors){
  $brightness = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property @{
        CurrentLevel = $monitor.CurrentBrightness
        MaxLevel = $($monitor.Level | sort | select -Last 1)
     }
  $brightness  
}    
}

The WmiMonitorBrightness class is used. The level property holds the brightness levels that can be set. A simple sort ensures we get the maximum setting

Testing the 4K boundary

Advanced Format disks have started shipping –see http://managedux.com/2011/04/26/using-vbscript-to-check-partitions-for-advanced-format-4k-512e-sector-alignment/

These disks use a 4096 byte sector instead of 512. To get the best performance from these disks the partitions have to be aligned to a 4K boundary. This happens automatically in Windows 2008 and above. 

We need to be able to start testing partition alignment. This function uses a couple of WMI classes to do just that.

function test-4KAligned {
[CmdletBinding()]
param (
   [string]$computer=".",
  
   [ValidatePattern("[A-Z]:")]
   [string]$drive
)

PROCESS{
$partitions = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_DiskPartition -ComputerName $computer

foreach ($partition in $partitions){
 
  $query = "ASSOCIATORS OF {Win32_DiskPartition.DeviceID=’$($partition.DeviceID)’} WHERE AssocClass=Win32_LogicalDiskToPartition"
  $disktopart = Get-WmiObject -ComputerName $computer -Query $query
 
 
if (($partion.StartingOffset % 4096) -eq 0){
   $align = $true
}
else {
   $align = $false
}
 
$diskpartition = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property @{
   Partition = $partition.Name
   Description = $partition.Description
   AlignedTo4Kboundary = $align
   Drive = $disktopart.DeviceID
}
if ($drive) {
   if ($drive -eq $diskpartition.Drive){$diskpartition}
}
else {$diskpartition}
}

}#process

<#
.SYNOPSIS
Tests disk partition alignment to 4k boundary

.DESCRIPTION
Tests disk partition alignment to 4k boundary.
See http://managedux.com/2011/04/26/using-vbscript-to-check-partitions-for-advanced-format-4k-512e-sector-alignment/
and
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh182553.aspx

Default is that all drives are tested

.PARAMETER  computer
Computer to test

.PARAMETER  drive
Drive to test

.EXAMPLE
test-4kaligned

Tests local machine

.EXAMPLE
test-4kaligned -computer server01

Tests remote machine

.EXAMPLE
test-4kaligned -computer server01 -drive C:

Tests C: drive on remote machine

#>

}

The test is performed using modulus arithmetic on the starting offset. A result of zero means its divisible exactly by 4096 so is aligned.

Rescheduled UG meeting

Apologies for rescheduling with no notice but my broadband router failed tonight.

When: Thursday, Jun 30, 2011 7:30 PM (BST)

Where: Live Meeting
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Re-scheduled – using PowerShell to automate Office including Word, Excel, OneNote, Visio and Access

Notes

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