January, 2010

(Note: This blog post appeared originally as an article on the old Microsoft Script Center. It was originally published in December 2005. We are resurrecting it here by popular demand.) Sometimes the things that should be so easy turn out to be incredibly...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a question. You guys seem to have a lot of material about automating Microsoft Office Word and Microsoft Office Excel. You have even written some stuff about automating Microsoft Office Outlook, but I have never seen anything...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have heard that Windows PowerShell 2.0 includes cmdlets to work with Microsoft Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). However, when I use the Get-Command cmdlet to list the available cmdlets in my Windows PowerShell session, I...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I am a MCSE and I still remember my instructor at the training center running around the room shouting, “Users go into groups, and groups get assigned rights and permissions.” Over and over again in different manners and in different...

In this post : How Can I Run This Windows PowerShell Command on a Remote Computer? Troubleshooting a Windows PowerShell Script for Active Directory Can I Detect the Title of the Command Prompt Window? How Can I Add Quotation Marks Around...

Hey Scripting Guy! I have been trying to add more comments to my Windows PowerShell scripts, but one thing that I really miss is a multiple-line comment character that I had in other programming languages. Not having a multiple-line comment was annoying...

Hey, Scripting Guy! Using Windows PowerShell to control Microsoft Visio looks really cool. However, if I have to manually enter all of the data in the script to produce the drawing, it is probably easier to open Microsoft Visio, drag and drop the shapes...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I really dig that I can have a module that contains functions and things. This seems like it would be groovy to use to customize my Windows PowerShell environment. The thing is that I do not want to be hopping around from desk to desk...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have been excited about the Microsoft Visio Week articles since I heard your interview back during the holidays. When I read your tweets as you were the writing the Hey, Scripting Guy! posts, I really got excited. I must say that...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I am interested in using Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) cmdlets to create users and organizational units. Is this a hard thing to do? I only ask this because I am an extremely busy network administrator who has barely had...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have been reading your articles this week about adding Help to scripts, and it looks really cool, but it also seems to be quite a bit of work. I would love to be able to display Help for a script when the script is run with a specific...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I am still a bit confused about how modules work. Could you give a beginning-to-end scenario and go through the steps of creating a module, installing the module, and then using the module? -- SL Hello, SL. Microsoft Scripting...

In this post: How Can I Manage a Remote Storage Array? How Can I Have a Dialog Box's OK Button Clicked Automatically? How Can I Format Microsoft Excel Columns with Windows PowerShell? Troubleshooting a Script That Creates a Shortcut...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have been reading your articles about Windows PowerShell modules this week, but I am still a bit confused about where they go, how to get them there, and the best practice for dealing with them. Do you have any insight about how...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I would like to do a drawing of the disk subsystem on my workstations. We are getting ready to upgrade to Windows 7, and I want to find out which computers have drives that are more than 50 percent full. In addition, I need to know...

In this post : How Can I Repair WMI Installations Remotely? How Can I Determine CPU Usage Information with WMI? Can I Use Windows PowerShell to Add a Path Value to a Windows XP Registry Key? Where Should I Store My Windows PowerShell Functions...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have been reading on Twitter and on various Web sites about Windows PowerShell 2.0 modules. However, I am not sure what a module is. Or why I would want to use one. Can you shed some light? -- MH Hello MH, Microsoft Scripting...

In this post : How Can I Read the Default Value of a Registry Key? How Can I Get Windows PowerShell for Windows 7? Getting the Get-WmiObject Cmdlet to Work What's the Best Way to Detect Registry Keys Using the WMI Provider? How Can...

The clicks are in, and here's how you voted. These were our most clicked blog posts in 2009. 1. Can I Download Multiple Files at Once with Internet Explorer in Windows 7? 2. How Can I Simply Have Windows PowerShell Display Information on the Screen...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I heard your interview the other day on the PowerScripting podcast , and I was really impressed. It is not every day I get to hear one of my heroes be interviewed on a podcast. I wanted to submit a question, but I got too carried away...

In this post : How Can I Get Users' SIDs? How Can I Get Information About Protected Processes Running on a Local Computer? How Can I Retrieve InstallDate for Devices? An Example of a Parsed Out File Name of a Monitored File How Do I...

Hey, Scripting Guy! I was told by the script committee at work that I must add Help to my scripts if they are to be stored in the official script repository we have at work. Can you tell me how I would go about doing this? -- CG Hello CG, ...

Hey, Scripting Guy! The pointy-headed boss is on a rampage. The problem is he has no idea why he is rampaging. This guy makes Nick Bottom seem like Aristotle. His latest obsession concerns service accounts. He wants me to create user accounts, with names...