The Curious Engineer

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Lessons Learned

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/timid

My drop-site for interesting snippets and tips. If it's useful to you as well, great!

Software / engineering practiceDev tools / editors / IDEsMicrosoft blogsMSDN archive

’10’15’20’25
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215 from 4 Aug 2009 to 1 Dec 2015
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archived, read-only
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2015 11

  1. Active Directory - Creating Install From Media dump
  2. Converting Whitespace-Indented Output to XML
  3. Moving Computer AD Objects
  4. IE, ADFS, and Overkill
  5. Backing Up BitLocker Keys to OneDrive as a Scheduled Task
  6. Configuring the ISE
  7. Left-Padding a String
  8. One-Liner: Left-Padding a String with Zeroes
  9. IPv4 Addresses and CIDR Fun
  10. PowerShell ISE Environment Keyboard Shortcuts, Part 2
  11. PowerShell ISE Environment Keyboard Shortcuts

2014 67

  1. $PSModuleAutoLoadingPreference and You
  2. Filtering Show-NetIPSec Rules based on IP Address
  3. Importing Azure RDC Files into RDCMan.exe’s RDG
  4. Namespaces, Why Does It Always Have To Be Namespaces?
  5. Backing Up BitLocker Recover Key (Strikes Again!)
  6. SkyDrive, OneDrive, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
  7. $PSBoundParameters and CommonParameters (-WhatIf, -Debug, etc.)
  8. I Hate Write-Host So Much…
  9. YOMER Yet One More Error Reporting (Method)
  10. Subshells (by the Seashore?)
  11. Send-Keys
  12. Decrypting SecureStrings (Once More!)
  13. One-Liner: PowerShell Tools for Visual Studio 2013
  14. Starting Elevated PowerShell Windows
  15. Creating Local Users
  16. Querying WMI with a Timeout
  17. Storing SecureStrings Machine-Independently
  18. Comparing Performance Counters
  19. One-Liner: Symlinks and Windows
  20. Getting SRV Records with PowerShell
  21. One-Liner: Valid PSH Verbs
  22. MSSQL Server Error Logs
  23. One-Liner: Padding a Number with Leading Zeroes
  24. Reinventing the Wheel: Get-WmiChildNamespace and Get-WmiChildPropertyData
  25. Copy-History – Copy a Previous Command to the Clipboard
  26. Suspend-Computer (a.k.a. Sleep)
  27. Windows Experience Index on 8.1
  28. HP Power Supplies
  29. #StupidProfileTrick - FunctionList
  30. Something I Should Have Done a While Ago: $continue
  31. 8.3, the Undead Path
  32. Write-Error, $Error, and Users
  33. VM Host
  34. Setting Cross-Forest Passwords
  35. Selecting an XML Element by #text value
  36. PowerShell for N00bs: Libraries, Paths, and You
  37. PowerShell –EncodedCommand and Round-Trips
  38. Scripting Best Practices, or Write-Host Considered Harmful
  39. Hotkeys and RDC Man
  40. Do-Something | Set-Variable Foo
  41. Function Skeleton for Invoke-Command –AsJob
  42. Parsing Dates by Hand
  43. CredLocker – Storing PSCredentials to File
  44. Invoke-WebRequest, a First Attempt
  45. Capturing Write-Noun Cmdlet Output
  46. One-Liner: Getting My Documents and Other Special Folders
  47. WMI and HP Product IDs
  48. Enums, Enums, Enums, a One-Liner
  49. WMI-Less Network Adapters
  50. Getting Event Logs with wevtutil.exe
  51. One-Liner: Resetting Desktop Toolbar
  52. Those Who Don’t Know Their History…
  53. I Should Have Done This Years Ago (New-Shortcut, Revisited)
  54. Meatball Surgery, the Taskbar, Toolbars, and You
  55. The Clipboard
  56. Finding Disk Hogs (i.e. Large Folders)
  57. Sanity-Checking RDG Files
  58. Modules vs. Scripts: It’s Not Just the Letter ‘M’
  59. Stupid Profile Trick: $PROFILE as Module
  60. Prompts
  61. CorpNet ProjectFunctionLibrary.psm1
  62. Getting Disk Usage
  63. Getting an SHA256 Hash
  64. Loop-de-Loop
  65. Read-Host With a Timeout, Kind Of…
  66. Testing Timestamps of Files Across a Slow Network
  67. Getting Version Data From Comment Based Help

2013 46

  1. One-Liner(s): X509 Certificate Store Names and You
  2. One-Liner: Case-Insensitive XML Queries
  3. Regular Expressions, Search-and-Replace Interpolation and Delegates
  4. Splitting a Hex-Encoded String into Pairs of Hex Characters (a.k.a. To Pull a Noah)
  5. Tip: Passing [switch]Parameters to Nested Functions
  6. Rehash: Playing with Window Size
  7. Capturing the Console Buffer
  8. Lenovo W530 and the Context Menu Key
  9. Windows 8, the F8 Key, and You
  10. Printing to Text
  11. BitLocker and Self-Immolation
  12. Stupid Microsoft Word Trick: Boilerplate Text (Same Source Text, Multiple Instances)
  13. Stupid Microsoft Word Trick: Multilevel Numbered Headings
  14. Drive-by: PowerGUI Visual Studio Extension
  15. Getting User Names for Processes
  16. PowerShell Integration with Visual Studio 12
  17. Enabling and Disabling Users
  18. Exporting Event Logs in Server 2003
  19. Why Use Approved Verbs?
  20. More Fun with Passwords
  21. Rehash: Testing for a 302 Redirect
  22. Rehash: Testing Web Pages Once More
  23. Setting Font in PowerShell.exe Window, Sort Of…
  24. Importing and Removing Certificates
  25. DFS (Distributed File System) Mountpoints Across Sites
  26. Getting Network Adapter Speed
  27. Getting OCS 2007 Certs through WMI Revisited
  28. Number of Processors vs. Number of Cores Revisited
  29. Certificate Chains
  30. Hack(saw)ing the Surface Pro
  31. RDCman Config Files (*.rdg)
  32. Futzing With System Variables
  33. Stopping Services Remotely and Recursively (But Without Recursion)
  34. Adding a Timestamp to a Pipeline of Strings
  35. Batch-Getting BIOS Serial Numbers
  36. Batch-Getting IP Addresses
  37. When Were These Computers Last Rebooted?
  38. Removing Monitoring Agents (Not Really)
  39. Getting Computer Memory Usage
  40. Fun with PSCredentials
  41. Converting PsCustomObject To/From Hashtables
  42. AppWiz.cpl in PowerShell
  43. PSH V1 Get-Tail
  44. Get-FileVersion
  45. Getting An SSL Web Page’s Certificate
  46. SQL Fun(ctions)

2012 13

  1. Removing Null Values
  2. Another Way to Create NoteProperty Entries
  3. Securely Storing a Password
  4. Why Semi-Colons?
  5. Laziness and XML: New-XmlElement
  6. Out-Error, the User-friendlier Write-Error
  7. One-Liner: Dotting in vs. Running a Script
  8. Getting OCS 2007 Certs through WMI
  9. Creating a Multi-Host Cert MMC
  10. Dumping ILO (and Other DHCP Addresses)
  11. RSA Authentication Manager User Auditing
  12. Clock Skew and You
  13. Set-ExecutionPolicy Fun

2011 41

  1. Batch-Unzipping Files
  2. Displaying an OCS Proxy Server's List of Trusted Servers
  3. Certificates Owned by a Service
  4. Hash to Arrayof Objects
  5. Propagating Default Options
  6. No Reply All
  7. Heavyweight Help in V1
  8. Quick and Dirty Help
  9. Getting Remote Event Logs
  10. Why Use Semi-colons
  11. Abbreviated Key Names in Synthetic Properties
  12. A Loop of One
  13. PowerShell and IIS Logs
  14. Getting Objects Out of AD
  15. PSH V1 or V2?
  16. XPath and attribute value strings
  17. Scanning for Binaries and Version
  18. Testing a Port
  19. Ignoring SSL Certificate Errors with WebClient
  20. "Manage Your Server" Welcome Screen
  21. Remotely Logging off RDP Sessions
  22. Don't Do This: PSExec'ing a Batch Script Containing a PowerShell Script
  23. PowerShell for Unix's "data | sort | uniq -c" and "sort -u"
  24. Number of Processors vs. Number of Cores
  25. Is Oracle WebLogic10 Installed?
  26. Test if IIS6 installed and .NET 2.0 Registered?
  27. Is East Asian Langauges Pack Installed?
  28. Is .Net 3.5 Installed?
  29. Is NetBIOS over TCP/IP Enabled?
  30. System Variables on Remote Machine
  31. Stupid PSH Trick: Diffing Lists
  32. My Way of Logging Problems: Log-Problem
  33. Playing with Window Size
  34. User Names, SIDs and Active Directory
  35. Auditing Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010's Exclusion List
  36. Getting Web Proxy Settings
  37. Stupid Tricks with REG_BINARY Registry Data
  38. SID, User Names, and Active Directory
  39. Nicely Wrapping a Line of text to STDOUT
  40. PowerShell, Downloaded Scripts, and Alternate Data Streams
  41. Pinging a Hostname with Timeout

2010 4

  1. One-Liner: GetDateTimeFormats
  2. PowerShell for Non-N00bs: LiveMeeting XML API and You
  3. PowerShell for Non-N00bs: Creating Shortcuts
  4. PowerShell Gotchas: Looping with $null

2009 33

  1. One-Liner: Setting Default Web Proxy for Windows Server 2003 and 2008
  2. PowerShell One-Liner: Getting This Computer's Asset Tag Number
  3. PowerShell for Non-N00bs: Formatting Time With RegEx
  4. PowerShell for Non-N00bs: System Uptime Via WMI
  5. PowerShell for Non-N00bs: Adding a User to a Group (with Script)
  6. One-Liner: Getting This Computer's Serial Number
  7. PowerShell One-Liner: Removing a System Variable
  8. PowerShell for N00bs: $env:temp vs. %TEMP%
  9. PowerShell for Non-N00bs: Certificates Installed on a Remote Host
  10. PowerShell for Non-N00bs: Certificate Files
  11. Free Beginner's PowerShell eBook
  12. PowerShell for Non-N00bs: [PSObject]::AddNodeProperty - the Missing Link
  13. PowerShell for Non-N00bs: [PSObject]::AddNodeProperty - the Missing Link
  14. PowerShell One-Liner: What's the Function Name?
  15. PowerShell One-Liner: Hardware SKU
  16. PowerShell One-Liner: Strings to Arrays and Back Again
  17. PowerShell One-Liner: Stripping Comments and Blanks
  18. TechTips: Debuggers, Process Explorer and Symbols
  19. PowerShell One-Liner: Decrypt-SecureString
  20. PowerShell for Non-N00bs: Symlinks
  21. Tech Tips: Command Prompt++ - the console.exe tool
  22. PowerShell One-Liner: List Time Formats
  23. TechTips: Don't Recall, Delay (Your Email, That Is)
  24. PowerShell for N00bs 4: More Properties than a Monopoly Board
  25. PowerShell One-Liner: Is this a debug build or not?
  26. PowerShell One-Liner: sort | uniq -c
  27. PowerShell for Non-N00bs: My Script Outline
  28. PowerShell for N00bs 3: What's a.k.a. short for?
  29. PowerShell for N00bs 2: Power Under the Hood
  30. PowerShell for Non-N00bs: How Much is That Character in the Window? (Or, How to Change Your Password Without Really Trying)
  31. Automated Logins with PuTTY, Pagent, ssh and ssh-agent
  32. PowerShell for N00bs 1: Hello, World
  33. PowerShell for N00bs 0: References