Short Version: Lots of answers already – I’ll primarily just add some links to existing answers. Here is a previous short answer of mine on the topic. Higher “glanceability”: The above answer features a simpler format with a list view of the most important current deployment tools. In a rush? Test these, chose one. Below … Read more
For upgrade code retrieval: How can I find the Upgrade Code for an installed MSI file? (or use the html table export script – shown below in section 2) Short Version The information below has grown considerably over time and may have become a little too elaborate. How to get product codes quickly? (four approaches): … Read more
There is valuable information in the existing answers, but I think a more focused summary is helpful. Note that the original form of this answer advocated strict avoidance of script blocks ({…}) and AD-provider variable evaluation, but this has been replaced with more nuanced recommendations. tl;dr Get-ADUser -Filter ‘sAMAccountName -eq $SamAc’ Do not quote the … Read more
Note: This answer shows how to switch the character encoding in the Windows console to UTF-8 (code page 65001), so that shells such as cmd.exe and PowerShell properly encode and decode characters (text) when communicating with external (console) programs with full Unicode support, and in cmd.exe also for file I/O.[1] If, by contrast, your concern … Read more
Yes, the increase assignment operator (+=) should be avoided for building an object collection, see also: PowerShell scripting performance considerations. Apart from the fact that using the += operator usually requires more statements (because of the array initialization = @()) and it encourages to store the whole collection in memory rather then push it intermediately … Read more
PowerShell says “execution of scripts is disabled on this system.”
After 1.5 years, the cmdlet I had pasted in the original answer has undergone so many updates that it has become completely outdated. Therefore I have replaced the code and the ReadMe with a link to the latest version. Join-Object Combines two object lists based on a related property between them. Description Combines properties from … Read more
Parameters in calls to functions in PowerShell (all versions) are space-separated, not comma separated. Also, the parentheses are entirely unneccessary and will cause a parse error in PowerShell 2.0 (or later) if Set-StrictMode -Version 2 or higher is active. Parenthesised arguments are used in .NET methods only. function foo($a, $b, $c) { “a: $a; b: … Read more
PetSerAl, as he routinely does, has provided the crucial pointer in a comment on the question: Member-access enumeration – the ability to access a member (a property or a method) on a collection and have it implicitly applied to each of its elements, with the results getting collected in an array, was introduced in PSv3.[1] … Read more
Martin Brandl’s answer provides an elegant and effective solution, but it’s worth digging deeper: PowerShell’s -replace operator (… -replace <search>[, <replace>]): Takes a regular expression as its first operand, <search> (the search expression), and invariably matches globally, i.e., it replaces all matches. ‘bar’ -replace ‘[ra]’, ‘@’ -> ‘b@@’ If you want to replace a literal … Read more