PowerShell for Windows Admins » Windows 7

PowerShell v3 installed modules

Richard Siddaway — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 10:17:52 +0000

This is the list of installed modules in PowerShell v3 on Windows 8

AppLocker
Appx
BitLocker
BitsTransfer
BranchCache
CimCmdlets
DirectAccessClientComponents
Dism
DnsClient
International
iSCSI
ISE
Kds
Microsoft.PowerShell.Diagnostics
Microsoft.PowerShell.Host
Microsoft.PowerShell.Management
Microsoft.PowerShell.Security
Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility
Microsoft.WSMan.Management
MMAgent
MsDtc
NetAdapter
NetConnection
NetLbfo
NetQos
NetSecurity
NetSwitchTeam
NetTCPIP
NetworkConnectivityStatus
NetworkTransition
PKI
PrintManagement
PSDiagnostics
PSScheduledJob
PSWorkflow
PSWorkflowUtility
ScheduledTasks
SecureBoot
SmbShare
SmbWitness
Storage
TroubleshootingPack
TrustedPlatformModule
VpnClient
Wdac
WebAdministration
WindowsDeveloperLicense
WindowsErrorReporting

This is the corresponding list on PowerShell v3 installed on Windows 7

AppLocker
BitsTransfer
CimCmdlets
ISE
Microsoft.PowerShell.Diagnostics
Microsoft.PowerShell.Host
Microsoft.PowerShell.Management
Microsoft.PowerShell.Security
Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility
Microsoft.WSMan.Management
PSDiagnostics
PSScheduledJob
PSWorkflow
PSWorkflowUtility
TroubleshootingPack

As you can see there is quite a difference!

All of the Windows 8 modules that are highlighted in yellow are CDXML based. They can’t be made available on Windows 7 because the underlying WMI classes aren’t available

Remoting between PowerShell v3 CTP 2 and PowerShell v2

Richard Siddaway — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:34:00 +0000

One of the questions on tonight’s Live Meeting concerned the compatibility between remoting on PowerShell v2 and PowerShell v3 CTP 2

The difference is that v3 uses a WSMAN 3.0 stack but v2 uses 2.0

I used two machines:

Windows 2008 R2 SP 1 with PowerShell v2
Windows 7 SP1 with PowerShell v3 CTP 2

on each machine I ensured remoting was enabled then ran

$s = New-PSSession –ComputerName
Invoke-Command -Session $s -ScriptBlock {get-service}

it worked in both cases

Looks like in this case you can remote both ways

Live Mesh Update

Richard Siddaway — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 09:22:27 +0000

Couple of points worth noting if you are going to use Live Mesh

(1) File paths longer than 269 characters (folder paths > 248) won’t sync – shorten the path to fix

(2) PST files won’t sync – even if they are not in use

By default Mesh wants to put the target folder into your Documents area. The way round it is:

On the source machine open Live Mesh select the folder to synchronise e.g. c:\scripts
On the target machine create c:\scripts
Open Live Mesh on the target machine
On the folder you want to sync select sync this folder
Select the folder you just created

The synchonisation now happens to the folder you want rather than your profile area.

Otherwise it works as advertised

Live Mesh

Richard Siddaway — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 17:03:46 +0000

One problem I’ve had for a while is how to keep my script library synchronised across a number of machines. I have a laptop I use for my development work at home and I have two netbooks – at least one of which is always with my when I’m away from home.

I’ve tried using robocopy and keeping everything on a USB stick but it just doesn’t work.

Live Mesh may be the answer

http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mesh?os=other

I can designate folders to sync and they will sync, including subfolders, across all three machines. The sync is in both directions.

Good price point as well!

Not something to contemplate for the enterprise but a good solution for private use.

This doesn’t necessarily take away the need for a backup but it does reduce the pressure on backups as I can accept rebuilding the machine and re-installing software. Its the data I can’t afford to lose.

Network Connection Ids

Richard Siddaway — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:42:08 +0000

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

root\wmi–MSBatteryClass

Richard Siddaway — Fri, 27 May 2011 18:17:04 +0000

A number of the classes in root\wmi return results from more than one class. That sounds odd but it can be explained by an example.

The namespace contains a number of classes related to the battery in laptops

gwmi -Namespace root\wmi -List *battery*

MSBatteryClassEvent
BatteryStatusChange
BatteryTagChange
MSBatteryClass
BatteryStaticData
BatteryRuntime
BatteryCycleCount
BatteryTemperature
BatteryStatus
BatteryFullChargedCapacity

We’ll ignore the event and change classes for now. If we pick out the MSBattery class we get information from a number of other classes returned – MSBattery is a super class.

PS> gwmi -Namespace root\wmi -Class MSBatteryClass | select __class

__CLASS
——-
BatteryCycleCount
BatteryFullChargedCapacity
BatteryStaticData
BatteryRuntime
BatteryStatus

Be aware that the runtime property returned by BatteryRuntime doesn’t respond to calculations you may find on the Internet when your OS is Windows 7

Battery status is a useful class to determine if you are on battery or external power & if the battery is charging

root\wmi – speeding the testing

Richard Siddaway — Thu, 26 May 2011 18:50:39 +0000

Testing the individual classes in root\wmi is a pain – so its time for some brute force. I’ll select a group of classes and test the selection

gwmi -Namespace root\wmi -List system* | fw

I can then iterate through them calling get-wmiobject.

This is a command line activity so aliases are OK

gwmi -Namespace root\wmi -List system* | foreach {gwmi -Namespace root\wmi -Class $_.Name}

I could do this for all classes but it could become a bit difficult sorting out results if I get a lot of them. We’ll see where this goes.

root\wmi – MS_SystemInformation

Richard Siddaway — Thu, 26 May 2011 18:42:23 +0000

Continuing our exploration of the murky jungle that is the root\wmi namespace we find a number of classes related to system configuration

gwmi -Namespace root\wmi -List *system* | fw

Of theses the only one I could get a respnse from on Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 was MS_SystemInfo.

gwmi -Namespace root\wmi -Class MS_SystemInformation

Active                 : True
BaseBoardManufacturer : Wistron
BaseBoardProduct       : 303C
BaseBoardVersion       : 08.48
BiosMajorRelease       : 15
BiosMinorRelease       : 52
BIOSReleaseDate        : 12/23/2008
BIOSVendor             : Hewlett-Packard
BIOSVersion            : F.34
ECFirmwareMajorRelease : 255
ECFirmwareMinorRelease : 255
InstanceName           : Root\mssmbios000_0
SystemFamily           : 103C_5335KV
SystemManufacturer     : Hewlett-Packard
SystemProductName      : HP G60 Notebook PC
SystemSKU              : NF300EA#ABU
SystemVersion          : F.34

It seems to combine some information from

Win32_ComputerSystem

Win32_BaseBoard

Win32_Bios

root\wmi – ProcessorBiosInfo

Richard Siddaway — Wed, 25 May 2011 19:17:36 +0000

The root\wmi namespace contains a massive number of classes. Unfortunately there appears to be very little documentation available for these classes. Another issue is that many of classes do not appear to return anything (at least on my Windows 7 system – further testing is required).

In this smalls series I intend to dig through some of these classes and see if we can find anything useful

There are a number of classes associated with the processor:

PS> Get-WmiObject -Namespace ‘root\wmi’ -List *Processor* | fw

ProcessorCStateEvent                ProcessorPerfStateEvent
ProcessorThrottleStateEvent         ProcessorAcpiCsdDependency
MSProcessorClass                    ProcessorBiosInfo
ProcessorBiosTStates                ProcessorStatus
ProcessorAcpiCsd                    ProcessorAcpiTsd
ProcessorBiosCStates                ProcessorAcpiCst
ProcessorAcpiXpss                   ProcessorAcpiTssState
ProcessorAcpiCstState               ProcessorAcpiTsdDependency
ProcessorPerformance                ProcessorAcpiXpssState
ProcessorAcpiTss

Out of this list the ProcessorBiosInfo works on Windows 7

PS> Get-WmiObject -Namespace ‘root\wmi’ -Class ProcessorBiosInfo

Active           : True
ApicId           : 0
InstanceName     : ACPI\AuthenticAMD_-_x86_Family_17_Model_3_-_AMD_Athlon_Dual-Core_QL-62\_0_0
NtNumber         : 0
PBlk             : 4112
PBlkLen          : 6
Pct              : System.Management.ManagementBaseObject
ProcessorId      : 0
Pss              : System.Management.ManagementBaseObject

Active and Instance name are obvious. The NtNumber is the OS processor Id

PBlk refers to the processor control block – address and length

The Pct and Pss objects can be drilled down into

$cpu = Get-WmiObject -Namespace ‘root\wmi’ -Class ProcessorBiosInfo
$cpu[0]
$cpu[0].Pct
$cpu[0].Pct.Control
$cpu[0].Pct.Status
$cpu[0].Pss
$cpu[0].Pss.State

Follow these through to see what may be useful.

We can see everything like this

001
002
003
004
005
006
007
008
009
010

Get-WmiObject -Namespace ‘root\wmi’ -Class ProcessorBiosInfo |
foreach {
$_ | select * -ExcludeProperty __*

$_.Pct.Control | select * -ExcludeProperty __*
$_.Pct.Status | select * -ExcludeProperty __*

$_.Pss.State | select * -ExcludeProperty __*

}

The class description just returns the following

ACPI Bios Processor Information

PAM 0.5

Richard Siddaway — Thu, 05 May 2011 18:18:44 +0000

Just released PowerShell Admin Modules (PAM) 0.5. This adds the PAMStability module for working with stability and reliability metrics on Windows 7 and 2008 R2. The following 2 functions are available:

get-stabilityindex
get-reliabilityrecords

see http://psam.codeplex.com/