PowerShell : 3 Cool tips to learn PowerShell.

 

6:30 am in the morning and my phone starts ringing……

I picked up the phone and I heard the familiar voice, it is  “A Murky Ana!”

A Murky Ana : “Are you sleeping?”

Me : “Nope, was playing soccer, at 6:30 am. Come On! what peoples does at 6:30 am in the morning? They do sleep.”

A Murky Ana: “OOps, sorry to wake you up, I have a question.”

Me: “What!!!! Can’t you ask a question after 4 hours, so that I can complete my sleep ( yawning) ”

A Murky Ana: “No! answer me now!”

Me : “{… thinking.. W.T.Heck} ,  OK, give me 3 minutes, let me make Coffee first? Can I hung up the phone can call you back?

A Murky Ana: “No! I can hold “

Me : “OK, OK”

I started making coffee and after that we started the conversation again…

Me: “Ok, what is your question?”

A Murky Ana: “ After talking with you week before ,  I am interested in Learning PowerShell, I want to know the tips to learn PowerShell”

Me : “Ok, Pick a Pen and write  down the tricks which i am sharing with you now.”

A Murky Ana: “ Done”

Me : “ I am giving you 3 cool tips to learn PowerShell easily and quickly”

Tip 1 :  “Start using PowerShell Console, rather than “CMD”

 

You can run the native windows command on “PowerShell Console” too, PowerShell console do support most of the in-built native command, So start using the PowerShell console to get familiar with it, to know more about it’s look and feel. Stop using the CMD. You can do the same thing which you do on cmd, it's time to replace CMD with PoweShell console.

 

TIP 2 : “Start using PowerShell Cmdlets rather than “native commands”

 

The more you use PowerShell cmdlets and the more you learn PowerShell. You can start using some basic PowerShell cmdlets and stop using the native ones. For example start using Test-Connection rather than using Ping.exe to below is the list of few command which you can use rather then the native ones.

 

Replace	With PowerShell Cmdlet
Ping	Test-Connection
Dir	Get-Childitem
Mkdir	New-Item
Cat	Get-Content
Tasklist.exe	Get-Process
Shutdown /r	Restart-Computer
net start	Start-Service
net stop	Stop-Service

 

Tip 3: “Make a new friend “Get-Help”

 

Start learning about PowerShell, the best way to learn is to start reading the ABOUT files. They have contain information about most of the PowerShell features and techniques.  Read a About file in a day and that make your PowerShell learning easy and fast.

PS C:\> Get-Help *about*

A Murky Ana: “That’s Cool. Ok I give a try and let you know, Bye!!!!!!!”

She hung up the phone……………………………..

 

* All characters appearing in this work are fictitious (Apart from ME and the Author of the books and the online reference on the blogs). Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 

Regards.

Aman Dhally

If you like, you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook. You can also check my “You Tube” channel for PowerShell video tutorials. You can download all of my scripts from “Microsoft TechNet Gallery”.

Powershell Tips : Use Only Powershell V2 cmdlets , with PowershellV3 Installed.

 

I use Windows 7 (64 bit) with Powershell V3 installed on it. Most of our users are still on PowerShell v2, Sometime when I am writing scripts for them i use some PowerShell v3 cmdlets accidently.

Normally I write the initially version of all scripts on PowerShell console and I do test my all script in the console only.

So I thought there must be a way to run PowerShell.exe with Version 2 only.

I found the solution and i thought I should share it with You.

It’s simple, Just run “Powershell.exe –Version 2” and this will open a PowerShell console with V2 cmdlets only.

Let’s test it.

When i run $PSVersionTable  in my PowerShell console, you can see that  my PSversion is 3.0.

Now lets run “Powershell.exe –Version 2” .

and new PowerShell console will open and let’s check it’s $PSVersionTable.

You can see that this PowerShell version of this console is 2.0.

Now let’s check one more thing.  Let’s see if version 2 is having Version 3.0 cmdlets or not (just to make our self bit  more confident).

Let’s search for all cmdlets those has the word Update. The Version 3 has a new cmdlet named “Update-Help”.

“Get-Command *update* -CommandType cmdlet”

and then run the same command on v2 PowerShell console.

You can check that , Update-Help cmdlet is not available on V2 console :)

Now i can use it and create a V2 script more confidentiality, without worrying of using v3 cmdlets accidentally. . :) 

Note: I tested this on Windows 7 (64 bit) with PowerShell v3 installed.

Thanks for reading and your time,.

Thanks

Aman Dhally