Quick glance at PowerShell environment

Logging in to a new system and need to know what my PowerShell capabilities are.

To have a quick overview of what I can do on that box I do this:

Write-Host "Installed PowerShell version: $($PSVersionTable.PSVersion.Major).$($PSVersionTable.PSVersion.Minor)"

Write-Host "Available PowerShell modules:"

Get-Module -ListAvailable | Select Name

Rename Active Directory groups with PowerShell

I was struggling with this one because there are several different name attributes for AD objects, name, DisplayName, SamAccountName, cn, etc.

I finally ended up with this solution which seems to rename all name attributes:

Import-Module ActiveDirectory

$TargetGroups = Get-ADGroup -Filter {Name -like "XXXDescription*"}

ForEach($SingleGroup in $TargetGroups)

{

    Write-Host "Old name: $($SingleGroup.Name)"

    $NewGroupName = $($SingleGroup.Name).Replace('XXXDescription','YYYYZZZZDescription')

    Write-Host "New name: $($NewGroupName)"

    Get-ADGroup $SingleGroup | Set-ADGroup -DisplayName $NewGroupName -SamAccountName $NewGroupName

    Get-ADGroup $SingleGroup | Rename-ADObject -NewName $NewGroupName

}

If there is a nicer solution, please feel free to post it in the comments.

Ping servers from a text file

This may look very simple ... but it took me some time to figure out :-(

I am on a Linux box and have a text file with server names / IPs that I want to ping.

How can I do that in a one-liner?

Here is what helped me:

cat [path to textfile] | xargs -n1 ping -c 2

Now I am still looking for a PowerShell one-liner to do something similar.

If you know one, please let me know in the comments.

Collect disk space data from remote servers

A little PowerShell Script that collects disk space data from remote servers.

I found this practical to collect statistical data.

###############################################################
_##################### # This script counts and calculated available and free disk
_ spare on remote servers # # A WMI query is used to collect the data # # Target servers and disks are in a separate comma-delimited
_ text file ###############################################################
_##################### # Input file location $InputFile = "ServersAndDisks.txt" # Loop through each line of the input file ForEach ($Line in $(Get-Content $InputFile)) { # Write line data into an array $Data = $Line.Split(",") # Get the server name (always first element of the array) $ServerName = $Data[0] write-host $ServerName # Loop through the remaining elements of the array to find
_ available disks For ($Count = 1; $Count -le $Data.GetUpperBound(0); $Count++) { # Get the disk name $Disk = $Data[$Count] # Run the WMI query $DiskInfo = Get-WmiObject Win32_LogicalDisk -ComputerName
_$ServerName -Filter "DeviceID='$Disk'" # Do some math on the data $DiskTotal = [math]::Round($DiskInfo.Size / 1GB, 1) $DiskFree = [math]::Round($DiskInfo.FreeSpace / 1GB, 1) $PercentageFree = [math]::Round($DiskInfo.FreeSpace /
_$DiskInfo.Size * 100, 1) # Output the results Write-Host "$Disk - $DiskTotal GB Total / $DiskFree GB free
_ ($PercentageFree %)" } }

The input file ServersAndDisks.txt is very simple - only a comma-delimited file with server name and the disks I want to check:
server001,C:,D:
server002,C:,D:
server003,D:

Fixing Windows 10 to run Firefox & Chrome after OS upgrade

Just upgraded from Windows 7 Home to Windows 10.

Firefox & Chome would not connect to the network.

Here is what helped me:

1. Started elevated cmd
2. Executed netsh winsock reset
3. Rebooted

PS: I had to do this for each (local) user account  on the box.