July, 2009

How Can I Migrate AutoText When I Upgrade from One Version of Microsoft Office to Another? Hey, Scripting Guy! We are in the process of converting from Office 2003 to Office 2007. Many people use AutoText and I am trying to automate the process...

Hey Scripting Guy! I need to be able to move a group from one organizational unit to another. The problem is that our network has thousands of groups and organizational units. What I need is a way to easily find the group and the organizational unit....

Hey Scripting Guy! It seems that I can never find what I need anymore. I am looking for a Windows PowerShell script that will add a user to multiple groups. The user and the group are in the same organizational unit, and I do not want to have to run the...

Hey Scripting Guy! I have several groups created in Active Directory whose membership has changed dramatically. Rather than go through a long list of users and try to manually clean up the list, I would like to just delete all the users from the group...

( Note Today’s response is taken from Ed Wilson’s book, Windows PowerShell Step by Step , which is available on Microsoft Press.) Hey, Scripting Guy! At my company, we are often called upon to create objects in Active Directory. I do not mind...

Troubleshooting a VBScript Script That Reports All Software Installed on a Computer Hey Scripting Guy! I am pretty new to use VBScript and seem to have hit a wall. I put together the script below to output a file containing all the software...

Hey Scripting Guy! I have a script that I wrote, and I am interested in modifying it to try and make it run faster. I know I can use the Measure-Object Windows PowerShell cmdlet, but I want to run the script several times and get the average time it takes...

Hey Scripting Guy! I am not sure why you are so excited about Windows PowerShell. It is much slower than VBScript. I am not talking about a little slow; I am talking about orders of magnitude slower. Sure it has some nice cmdlets, but the performance...

Hey Scripting Guy! At our company, we have a lot of Windows PowerShell scripts we use to gather information from various client computers distributed throughout the network. All of these scripts are in a single folder. Recently, several users have been...

Hey Scripting Guy! I have a question today that is not about writing a script so much as it is about testing the script after it is written. I know you have written the scripts for the Windows 7 Resource Kit , the Windows Server 2008 Resource Kit , and...

How Can I Query a Registry Value Remotely? I have a simple question: What is the equivalent to querying the MicrosoftIE_Summary WMI class in Windows Vista? I just need to get the version of Internet Explorer. One small problem though: The Windows PowerShell...

I have a script that I wrote for the help desk people. It is actually a pretty cool script because it lets the user of the script type in a WMI class name, and it connects to the remote computer and retrieves all the information from the particular WMI...

I am the script writer at my company, and I have really been enjoying your articles on Windows PowerShell. I have begun the process of converting some of our old VBScripts to Windows PowerShell, and all of my new scripts are written in Windows PowerShell...

Hey Scripting Guy! I have a script that requests user input for a computer name before connecting to a remote computer to perform a WMI query. The problem is that when our help desk people use the script, they invariably type the wrong name of the remote...

Hey Scripting Guy! When I used to write VBScripts, I liked the fact that I could use On Error Resume Next to handle any errors in my scripts. I have tried to find something like this in Windows PowerShell, but I have been unable to do so. Does Windows...

Troubleshooting a Windows Powershell Script Hey Scripting Guy! I tried to use the script from the May 2009 TechNet Magazine article, Hey, Scripting Guy! Working with Access Databases in Windows PowerShell . But when I run it I get an error. This happens...

Hey Scripting Guy! I am having a problem trying to create a CSV file from within Windows PowerShell. I thought at first I could use the Write-Host cmdlet to do this. I came up with this command: Write-Host "col1,col2,col3" >> "C:\fso\test.csv...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have been having problems with trying to understand functions in Windows PowerShell. I get that you use the Function keyword to create the function, but I do not know how to get information from the function back to the script. I...

Hey, Scripting Guy! You know the old commercial that goes, "Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't"? Well, sometimes I want to save information from a script to a file, and sometimes I want to see it displayed to the screen. And at other times...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I am not into all those fancy scripts you seem to write. I am just a basic, everyday network administrator, and I simply need to use scripts to make my job easier. Because of this, I am not interested in displaying progress bars, writing...

Script Center 101 (link takes you to the Microsoft Download Center) Scripting Guy Ed Wilson takes you on a guided tour of the new Script Center Web site, which was launched on June 11, 2009. Excuse our dust as we continue to improve the new site. ...

How Can I List Files and Folders with Special Characters in Their Names? Hey, Scripting Guy! First I would like to thank you for all the good humour you present me every time I need you. I’m trying to use one of your scripts to list the files and...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I would like to have my script prompt the user for information when it is run. But I would like the person running the script to be able to supply more than one piece of information when the script is run. For example, I would like...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I would like to be able to use a named parameter when running my scripts. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that I think that it looks cool to use a named parameter. The second reason is probably just as important...