2020-12-30 18:20
The following PowerShell code can be used to extract an icon from a file. The extracted icon will be saved with an ico file type.
$Source = "C:\Path\To\SourceFile.exe"
$Target = "C:\Path\To\… Read More
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The web site of Peter Hinchley (Hinch). A random splattering of thoughts on faith, technology, design, photography, philosophy, fashion, culture, music, and anything else that grabs my attention.
2020-02-06 13:02
Microsoft recently released the Chromium-based version of Microsoft Edge. Although various properties of the browser can be configured via group policy, it wasn’t obvious how I could p… Read More
2018-06-01 15:42
This is a quick post demonstrating how you can save email attachments from an Exchange mailbox using PowerShell. The code recursively searches all folders under the root of a mailbox for ite… Read More
2018-05-28 13:00
This is a short post demonstrating how you can determine the properties of a Windows executable by inspection of the Portable Executable (PE) header of the file using PowerShell. The example… Read More
2018-05-20 07:40
This is just a quick tip demonstrating how you can easily disable one or more Active Directory user accounts, and randomise the password of each, using a single PowerShell command. I use thi… Read More
2018-05-20 07:40
I recently developed a VBA macro for Microsoft Outlook 2016 that would allow a user to export one or more emails, and their attachments, to a single consolidated PDF document.
I wrote the ma… Read More
2018-05-20 07:40
For reasons I can't quite understand, I was recently asked to develop a solution for exporting a web site to a collection of Microsoft Word documents. The content within each page, excluding… Read More
2018-05-19 19:20
The following PowerShell code will add a new user to HPE Content Manager. There a few things you will need to do before using the code. Firstly, you will need to change the dataset and workg… Read More
2018-05-19 19:20
Here is some code I wrote this week to remove a user's device profile and directory number from Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCM) via the AXL API using PowerShell. There are a few p… Read More
2018-05-19 19:20
Here is some code I wrote this week to remove a user's account from Cisco Unity via the REST API using PowerShell. There are a few parts to the solution:
A query is initiated to retrieve the… Read More
2017-12-04 18:00
The following PowerShell script can be used to retrieve the scaling rate of a monitor. This is the percentage value shown under Scale and layout when you right click on a Windows 10 desktop… Read More
2017-10-12 09:45
In the environment where I work, users of an enterprise deployment of Windows 10 1703 were reporting that the Screen Sketch program (part of Windows Ink) was outputting images with a black b… Read More
2017-09-04 19:21
If you are experiencing issues using the Offline Files capability within Windows to synchronize files and folders from a network share to a computer, you may benefit from enabling the Offlin… Read More
2017-08-13 18:41
If you attempt to run an executable from a UNC path you may encounter an Open File - Security Warning dialog as shown below:
This dialog will be displayed if the server hosting the share is… Read More
2017-04-17 21:44
In this post I will show how you can deploy a PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC) Pull Server on Windows Server 2016.
I am assuming you already have two systems deployed with Window… Read More
2017-04-17 09:21
Here are a few PowerShell scripts for automating the creation of a new Windows Server 2016 Nano Server image.
The following code is used to create a folder structure suitable for creating ne… Read More
2017-04-11 17:41
A quick guide on creating a web server certificate from the command line using an enterprise root certificate authority. This example creates a cert named web.lab.hinchley.net with a SAN of… Read More
2017-04-09 04:01
When setting up an automatic deployment rule (ADR) in Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager it is generally a good idea to exclude software updates that aren't relevant to your envir… Read More
2017-04-01 23:24
Let's say you have a Windows Server 2016 domain member server running Hyper-V, and you want to connect to the server via the Hyper-V management console from a workgroup computer. Assuming yo… Read More
2017-03-20 15:21
Today I started work on the development of an image gallery using HTML and CSS. The gallery was based on a grid of thumbnails. Each image was square, and all were of the same size: 240px x 2… Read More
2017-03-18 14:01
In this article I will describe how you can archive your Twitter timeline into a sqlite database using PHP.
You can view the working code on Github.
Before using the code, you will need to c… Read More
2017-03-15 12:01
I was recently asked to get Notes Shared Login (NSL) working on a Windows 2012 R2 server running Citrix XenDesktop. Now, officially this isn't supported; however, in theory, it should work… Read More
2017-02-26 12:40
I recently noticed that it was taking a very long time for newly added printers to appear under the Devices and Printers view in Control Panel on a system running Windows Server 2012 R2. Aft… Read More
2017-02-19 09:41
By default, the Everyone group is assigned print permissions to local printers in Windows. This is typically a good thing, but what if you want to limit printing to only a specific group of… Read More
2017-02-19 09:41
I was recently asked to devise a solution to prevent staff from listening to audio on a Windows computer without using headphones (i.e. to disable sound via speakers, but to allow sound via… Read More
2017-02-19 09:41
This post assumes you know something about the Windows registry, and in particular, registry hives. If not, I recommend you take up some background reading.
Earlier this week I found myself… Read More
2016-11-14 07:39
On a new deployment of Windows 10 LTSB (1607) I noticed the following error in the System event log:
The application-specific permission settings do not grant Local Activation permission… Read More
2016-11-08 08:15
In this short post I will demonstrate how you can rewrite requests to resources hosted on an IIS web server.
Firstly, you need to download and install the IIS rewrite module from Microsoft… Read More
2016-08-15 11:41
If you are trying to create a configuration item in SCCM that uses PowerShell scripts for discovery and remediation, you might encounter an issue if your environment requires all scripts to… Read More
2016-07-19 09:42
The default "Hero" wallpaper in Windows 10 is available under C:\Windows\Web\4K\Wallpaper\Windows in a variety of sizes matching common screen layouts. Wouldn't it be nice if you could autom… Read More
2016-07-09 08:37
I recently got caught out by a difference in behaviour between .NET and PowerShell when casting integers.
Take the following C# code sample; it initialises an unsigned 16 bit integer with t… Read More
2016-07-09 07:48
I recently needed to show a message on the Windows logon screen when a certain condition was satisfied. The solution I devised was to use a scheduled task that would run a PowerShell script… Read More
2016-07-05 10:10
PowerShell 5.0 introduces support for object-oriented programming, however, we don't always have the luxury of working on systems where PowerShell 5.0 is installed. When I am stuck using an… Read More
2016-06-29 12:11
A quick tip on sorting an array of hashes in PowerShell using multiple keys. Let's say you have an array, where each element is a hash containing a person's name and age:
$people = @(
@{'… Read More
2016-06-20 11:27
Today I needed to write a PowerShell script to add new lines to a text file, and also remove lines that matched a specific pattern. This is reasonably straight forward, but the catch was tha… Read More
2016-06-19 06:13
It's not uncommon to encounter thousands of collections in a large deployment of Microsoft SCCM. If the refresh cycle of the collections is not carefully managed, you may start to experience… Read More
2016-06-19 04:13
I've lost count of how many times I have used the script referenced in this article to extract the Microsoft Office updates installed on a computer. I install Microsoft Office, connect the… Read More
2016-06-18 00:43
Ever tried to log onto a server, only to hit a brick wall, because NLA is enabled, and your password has expired? Unless you are able to connect via an interactive console session, which may… Read More
2016-06-17 12:57
A short PowerShell code snippet for listing the names of the content (packages and applications) assigned to an SCCM 2012 distribution point.
$sitecode = 'LAB'
$provider = 'SCCM'
$groupna… Read More
2016-06-13 08:32
This short article demonstrates how to update an ISO using PowerShell. The script is specifically designed to modify the content of an ISO generated using the "offline task sequence media" c… Read More
2016-06-13 05:07
AppLocker is a software whitelisting product from Microsoft that ships with Windows. It can be used to restrict the software that will execute on a computer.
Overview of Policies
AppLocker… Read More
2016-06-09 10:23
By default, a Windows Server 2012 R2 DNS server is enabled for "round-robin" and "netmask ordering". These settings come into effect when there are multiple addresses registered for the same… Read More
2016-06-04 05:09
In this article I will demonstrate how to create a simple web server in PowerShell.
There are a few parts to the solution:
The code that listens for inbound requests on a specific host hea… Read More
2016-05-29 07:39
I recently noticed several SCCM clients were permanently pointing at an inaccessible Software Update Point (which was located behind a firewall in a gateway zone). The WUAHandler.log on each… Read More
2016-04-02 06:14
I recently needed to run a PowerShell script in an environment where PowerShell.exe was blocked by an AppLocker policy (it was deemed to be a security risk). In this environment, signing the… Read More
2016-03-28 06:43
I recently wrote a PowerShell script that used the Windows Forms .NET assembly to create a graphical user interface. The form included a button that initiated a long-running task. While the… Read More
2016-03-25 08:59
Imagine you have a shit-ton of users working out of a remote office on the other side of a high-latency, low-bandwidth WAN link. These hypothetical users are currently using Outlook 2010 in… Read More
2016-03-25 08:51
Here are two small PowerShell scripts. The first returns the Active Directory group membership of the currently logged on user (i.e. the user running the script). The second returns the Acti… Read More
2016-03-25 05:22
I recently reworked this awesome code from Michael Murgolo to set the time zone of a Windows computer using PowerShell.
To use the script, just pass the name of a valid time zone as listed… Read More
2016-03-25 04:39
This great article by Dave Vespa explains how to create a new Outlook 2016 profile using MFCMAPI. It even includes a C++ code sample that can be used to automate the task. Unfortunately, I h… Read More
2016-03-25 02:55
The following SCCM collection query will retrieve all systems where an advertisement has not completed successfully. In particular, the query identifies the systems where the last status mes… Read More
2016-03-25 02:54
Here is a PowerShell code snippet to rerun an advertisement on all computers in a collection. It is dependent on access to a DLL from the Client Centre for Configuration Manager.
The code s… Read More
2016-03-25 02:50
Here is the scenario: You've been provided with an MSI. The installer includes a transform (an MST) that references a cabinet (CAB) file. The cabinet includes a single configuration file whi… Read More
2016-02-08 07:59
Two quick PowerShell code snippets. The first demonstrates how to take a plaintext password, encrypt it, and save it to a file. The second shows how to retrieve and decrypt the previously en… Read More
2016-02-07 03:00
You've written a PowerShell script and you want to run it using a shortcut on the desktop. But when you do, a console window is briefly displayed. How do you hide it?
It's not enough to inv… Read More
2016-02-06 23:00
There are a few options for reading a Microsoft Excel workbook using PowerShell, but one of the most efficient is to use the Open XML SDK.
Firstly, download the Open XML SDK 2.5 from Micros… Read More
2016-01-31 10:31
It sounds simple. You want to prevent the "first-run" welcome page from appearing for new users when they open Microsoft Edge on Windows 10. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a group policy set… Read More
2016-01-22 08:50
Ever find yourself invoking a Microsoft Office application, such as Word, via COM, and needing to disable an add-on in the process? Probably not, but in case you do, here is a PowerShell sni… Read More
2016-01-19 22:45
The following commands will create a new device collection in SCCM 2012 (or later) with the name Foo that is configured for incremental updates, and for a weekly full refresh (on Saturday at… Read More
2016-01-19 10:31
Although you can create an application in SCCM using the native Configuration Manager cmdlets (e.g. New-CMApplication and Add-CMDeploymentType), you cannot create a script-based deployment t… Read More
2016-01-17 09:06
In this post I will provide an overview of the steps required to build a PXE-enabled RDP client using Thinstation.
Overview
Thinstation is an open source thin client-solution based on Crux… Read More
2016-01-01 02:24
In this post I will explain how you can retrieve information about a Hyper-V host from a guest virtual machine after booting from a WinPE 10 boot WIM.
The steps in this post draw from the g… Read More
2015-12-30 07:36
This article briefly captures the steps I used to build a Debian 8.2 (Jessie) server with nginx 1.6.2, MySQL 5.5 and PHP 7.0.1.
Firstly, I downloaded the first 64-bit (amd64) Debian 8.2.0 I… Read More
2015-12-07 11:09
I recently needed to reset the configuration, metadata, and content of a WSUS server. I wanted to wipe the entire slate clean, and start again. This is the process I followed:
Stopped the W… Read More
2015-11-24 01:06
There is a setting in Microsoft Outlook 2010 to configure how shading is applied to the form fields of a message. To access this setting via the GUI, start Outlook, click New E-mail, then fr… Read More
2015-10-27 11:26
You are a local administrator on a server, and you are about to install an application. The installation package requires a specific user right, and guess what, you don't have it. To make ma… Read More
2015-10-17 10:48
In this article I will demonstrate how to use PowerShell to deploy a previously captured operating system image using Microsoft Configuration Manager 2012 R2 SP1.
This post is a continuatio… Read More
2015-10-17 10:44
In this article I will show how you can install and configure Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2013 using PowerShell.
You will need the following:
Ideally, you will install MDT onto an existin… Read More
2015-10-17 04:42
In this article I will outline the steps required to configure a highly available DHCP deployment on Windows Server 2012 R2.
The code samples are used to create a DHCP scope of 10.0.0.220 … Read More
2015-10-14 10:34
There are a few "modern-UI" applications in Windows 10 that have no place in the enterprise. For example, Contact Support and Windows Feedback. Unfortunately, these pesky apps are considered… Read More
2015-10-13 11:18
In the good old days it was possible to delegate access to Hyper-V using AzMan. Unfortunately, support for AzMan was deprecated with the release of Hyper-V 2012, and nuked entirely in 2012 R… Read More
2015-10-11 10:53
So you've downloaded El Capitan from the App Store to your Mac. The installer is sitting in your Applications folder. And now you want to create a bootable USB stick that can be used to perf… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
The default refresh interval for group policy is 90 minutes with an additional 0 to 30 minute random offset. You can also manually trigger a policy refresh by running gpupdate. Note: The ref… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
The code in this post is rather simplistic, and very specific to a particular task, but some of the concepts may prove useful to others.
The requirement was to copy a specific log file from… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
Unicode is a character encoding standard that supports most of the world's written languages. To support such a broad character set with a standard US keyboard, individual Unicode characters… Read More
2006-06-07 11:16
Toward the end of my previous post on using SetWindowsHookEx to create global system hooks, I alluded to my failed attempt at changing window titles with PowerShell by hooking WM_SETTEXT mes… Read More
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