Process & Help related commands:
- get-process: It returns all the process that are current running in windows.
E.g:
PS D:\Projects\Practice> get-process
Handles NPM(K) PM(K) WS(K) VM(M) CPU(s) Id ProcessName
——- —— —– —– —– —— — ———–
305 29 74312 92116 256 3.19 1976 AcroRd32
236 15 5180 13156 97 0.08 4276 AcroRd32
105 9 6784 8204 40 0.06 6948 audiodg
30 5 640 2644 29 1548 conhost
30 4 608 2440 27 1660 conhost
338 14 1724 3984 52 520 csrss
445 25 2232 66576 231 596 csrss
We can add a wild card search to find a particular process information as.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> get-process note*
Handles NPM(K) PM(K) WS(K) VM(M) CPU(s) Id ProcessName
——- —— —– —– —– —— — ———–
84 8 1356 6792 91 0.17 4588 notepad
- stop-process: It stops a particular process depending on the process id we pass to the command.
E.g: Process id of notepad is 4588 so to stop the notepad process we can do the following.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> get-process note*
Handles NPM(K) PM(K) WS(K) VM(M) CPU(s) Id ProcessName
——- —— —– —– —– —— — ———–
84 8 1356 6792 91 0.17 4588 notepad
PS D:\Projects\Practice> Stop-Process -id 4588
PS D:\Projects\Practice>
- Using –whatif to prototype a command: In the above example we stopped the process but we never came to know what the stop-process command actually did. So here we can use the –whatif parameter to know what exactly the process is doing. Below example will illustrate the same.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> Get-Process note*
Handles NPM(K) PM(K) WS(K) VM(M) CPU(s) Id ProcessName
——- —— —– —– —– —— — ———–
68 7 1244 5448 89 0.02 484 notepad
PS D:\Projects\Practice> stop-process -id 484 -WhatIf
What if: Performing operation “Stop-Process” on Target “notepad (484)”.
PS D:\Projects\Practice>
So the –Whatif parameter revealed the action performed “What if: Performing operation “Stop-Process” on Target “notepad (484)”.
- Confirming Commands: We can ask a user to confirm whether to execute the command or not
with the –confirm parameter.
So as we can see from the screenshot the command is asking for confirmation from the user whether to continue execution.
- Working with the help option: If you want to get some help related to some commands use the “Get-Help” command. Lets see how it works with the commands we executed above say Stop-Process.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> Get-Help stop-process
NAME
Stop-Process
SYNTAX
Stop-Process [-Id] <int[]> [-PassThru] [-Force] [-WhatIf] [-Confirm] [<CommonParameters>]
Stop-Process -Name <string[]> [-PassThru] [-Force] [-WhatIf] [-Confirm] [<CommonParameters>]
Stop-Process [-InputObject] <Process[]> [-PassThru] [-Force] [-WhatIf] [Confirm] [<CommonParameters>]
ALIASES
spps
kill
REMARKS
Get-Help cannot find the Help files for this cmdlet on this computer. It is displaying only partial help.
– To download and install Help files for the module that includes this cmdlet, use Update-Help.
– To view the Help topic for this cmdlet online, type: “Get-Help Stop-Process -Online” or
go to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=113412.
So we can see that a detailed help is provided with all the options we can use with Stop-Process. You can also use other options with get-help given below.
- Get-help Stop-Process –detailed
- Get-help Stop-Process –full
- Get-help Stop-Process –examples
Can also do a wild card search to get help as:
- Get-help about*
- Get-help get*
System info & output formatting commands:
- Get-Childitem Cmdlet: Used to get all the files and folders in a directory as “dir” command in DOS. Eg:
PS D:\Projects\Practice> Get-ChildItem C:\
Directory: C:\
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
—- ————- —— —-
d—- 4/9/2013 2:07 AM inetpub
d—- 4/9/2013 1:50 AM Intel
d—- 7/26/2012 1:03 PM PerfLogs
d-r– 4/9/2013 2:45 AM Program Files
d-r– 4/8/2013 5:04 PM Program Files (x86)
d-r– 4/8/2013 4:13 PM Users
d—- 4/9/2013 10:23 AM Windows
-a— 4/8/2013 2:35 PM 1024 .rnd
PS D:\Projects\Practice>
- Formatting output with the Format-List Cmdlet: We can pipe the Format-List Cmdlet with Get-Childitem or any other commands to format the output in more detail as per our requirement. Given example will display all display file and folder information in C drive in more depth.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> Get-ChildItem C:\ | Format-List
Directory: C:\
Name : inetpub
CreationTime : 4/9/2013 2:06:56 AM
LastWriteTime : 4/9/2013 2:07:01 AM
LastAccessTime : 4/9/2013 2:07:01 AM
Name : Intel
CreationTime : 4/9/2013 1:50:42 AM
LastWriteTime : 4/9/2013 1:50:42 AM
LastAccessTime : 4/9/2013 1:50:42 AM
Name : PerfLogs
CreationTime : 7/26/2012 1:42:58 PM
LastWriteTime : 7/26/2012 1:03:46 PM
LastAccessTime : 7/26/2012 1:03:46 PM
Name : Program Files
CreationTime : 7/26/2012 11:07:58 AM
LastWriteTime : 4/9/2013 2:45:02 AM
LastAccessTime : 4/9/2013 2:45:02 AM
Name : Program Files (x86)
CreationTime : 7/26/2012 11:07:58 AM
LastWriteTime : 4/8/2013 5:04:29 PM
LastAccessTime : 4/8/2013 5:04:29 PM
Name : Users
CreationTime : 7/26/2012 11:07:58 AM
LastWriteTime : 4/8/2013 4:13:39 PM
LastAccessTime : 4/8/2013 4:13:39 PM
Name : Windows
CreationTime : 7/26/2012 11:07:59 AM
LastWriteTime : 4/9/2013 10:23:30 AM
LastAccessTime : 4/9/2013 10:23:30 AM
Name : .rnd
Length : 1024
CreationTime : 4/8/2013 2:35:18 PM
LastWriteTime : 4/8/2013 2:35:18 PM
LastAccessTime : 4/8/2013 2:35:18 PM
VersionInfo : File: C:\.rnd
InternalName:
OriginalFilename:
FileVersion:
FileDescription:
Product:
ProductVersion:
Debug: False
Patched: False
PreRelease: False
PrivateBuild: False
SpecialBuild: False
Language:
We can also specify particular property name just to view particular properties of files and folders. Given example illustrates where we print only the name and length.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> Get-ChildItem C:\ | Format-List -Property name, length
Name : inetpub
Name : Intel
Name : PerfLogs
Name : Program Files
Name : Program Files (x86)
Name : Users
Name : Windows
Name : .rnd
Length : 1024
Using the Format-Wide Cmdlet: We can use the Format-Wide Cmdlet in the same way we use the Format-List Cmdlet. Given Example will illustrate.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> Get-ChildItem C:\ | Format-Wide
Directory: C:\
[inetpub] [Intel]
[PerfLogs] [Program Files]
[Program Files (x86)] [Users]
[Windows] .rnd
- New-Object Cmdlet: The use of objects in powershell helps us to do things that are not built into the Powershell. We can access comobjects using the New-Object Cmdlet. We can use following commands to access the object called as wshShell object:
$wshShell = new-object –comobject “wscript.shell”
The above line will using New-Object Cmdlet create a new instance of wscript.shell and will accolcate to variable $wshShell. Now if we want to invoke an instance of calculator by using run method we can write.
$wshShell.Run(“calc.exe”)
Below screenshot describes what actually happened when we executed the command:
To get the current windows installable directory path we can use the ExpandEnvironmentStrings() method.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> $wshShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings(“%windir%”)
C:\Windows
To get network related information we have to use the “wscript.network” object.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> $wshNetwork = new-object -comobject “wscript.network”
We can get current username logged into system we can use the username property of wscript.network object.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> $wshNetwork.UserName
Arunava
To get Domain name we can use UserDomain property.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> $wshNetwork.UserDomain
PMTSMIT02
To get Computer name we use ComputerName property.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> $wshNetwork.ComputerName
PMTSMIT02
To display any information in popup we can use popup() method of wscript.shell object
Invoking .Net libraries and code using powershell:
PowerShell is can invoke static methods and properties from the .Net Framework. Let’s focus on the System.DateTime class. Let’s see the different methods and properties available.
All the static member and properties will be displayed
PS D:\Projects\Practice> [System.DateTime] | gm –static
TypeName: System.DateTime
Name MemberType Definition
—- ———- ———-
Compare Method static int Compare(datetime t1, datetime t2)
DaysInMonth Method static int DaysInMonth(int year, int month)
Equals Method static bool Equals(datetime t1, datetime t2), static bool Equals(System.Object objA, System.Object objB)
FromBinary Method static datetime FromBinary(long dateData)
FromFileTime Method static datetime FromFileTime(long fileTime)
FromFileTimeUtc Method static datetime FromFileTimeUtc(long fileTime)
FromOADate Method static datetime FromOADate(double d)
IsLeapYear Method static bool IsLeapYear(int year)
Parse Method static datetime Parse(string s), static datetime Parse(string s, System.IFormatProvider provider), stat…
ParseExact Method static datetime ParseExact(string s, string format, System.IFormatProvider provider), static datetime P…
ReferenceEquals Method static bool ReferenceEquals(System.Object objA, System.Object objB)
SpecifyKind Method static datetime SpecifyKind(datetime value, System.DateTimeKind kind)
TryParse Method static bool TryParse(string s, [ref] datetime result), static bool TryParse(string s, System.IFormatPro…
TryParseExact Method static bool TryParseExact(string s, string format, System.IFormatProvider provider, System.Globalizatio…
MaxValue Property static datetime MaxValue {get;}
MinValue Property static datetime MinValue {get;}
Now Property datetime Now {get;}
Today Property datetime Today {get;}
UtcNow Property datetime UtcNow {get;}
Lets try and invoke a static method:
PS D:\Projects\Practice> [System.DateTime]::IsLeapYear(2009)
False
We can also create .Net objects. Let’s create a date object:
PS D:\Projects\Practice> $d = new-object System.DateTime 2009,11,11
Get the current datetime using the date object.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> $d – [System.DateTime]::now
Days : -1245
Hours : -18
Minutes : -26
Seconds : -23
Milliseconds : -650
Ticks : -1076343836507017
TotalDays : -1245.76832929053
TotalHours : -29898.4399029727
TotalMinutes : -1793906.39417836
TotalSeconds : -107634383.650702
TotalMilliseconds : -107634383650.702
Lets add some days to the date object.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> $d.AddDays(11)
Saturday, April 20, 2009 18:29:45 PM
Lets now create a powershell script copy and save the below line of code as test.PS1 extension.
Add-Type @”
namespace t1
{
public class Point
{
public int x;
public int y;
public Point(int x, int y) {
this.x = x;
this.y = y;
}
public override string ToString()
{
return string.Format(“POINT({0}, {1})”, x,y);
}
public void Double()
{ x = x*2;
y = y*2;
}
}
}
“@
The command Add-Type is used to declare the type that follows in the C# code. The C# code is a simple Point class. It has a constructor, and overridden ToString method and a Double function.
Switch back to the PowerShell window and change directories to the one that holds the script and invoke the script.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> .\test.ps1
The type is now defined and be freely used. Let’s create a Point.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> $p = New-Object T1.Point 10,10
Let’s check the contents of $p.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> $p | ft –auto
x y
- -
10 10
Let’s invoke the Double method.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> $p.Double()
Now lets check whats the value in $p.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> $p.ToString()
POINT(20, 20)
Now lets invoke the method using the wscript.shell popup() method.
PS D:\Projects\Practice> $wshShell.Popup($p.ToString())
