Deleting missing or dead iTunes music entries

Posted on September 25, 2019 by Dale

The song could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?

For whatever reason, I ended up deleting some MP3 files from my music storage, and my iTunes Library still had (now "dead") links to the files.

To find these dead links I wrote some Powershell code …

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The last time my computer was seen on the network …

Posted on July 30, 2018 by Dale

was something I wrote about 8 years ago, in Detecting inactive computers in your AD domain.

So it was time to update that*.

Get-ADComputer -Filter * -Properties Name, LastLogonTimeStamp | Select-Object -Property Name, CanonicalName, @{ n = "LastLogonDate"; e = { [datetime]::FromFileTime( $_.lastLogonTimestamp ) } } | Export-CSV -NoTypeInformation "C:\temp\lastlogontimestamp.csv"

will give you a handy list of computer name and the last time they were seen on the network#.

* The Quest product is no longer free.
# within the last 14 days.

Reference:
PowerShell: Get-ADComputer to retrieve computer last logon date – part 1
Converting LastLogon to DateTime format
Script: LastLogonTimestamp export csv

Using PowerShell to ZIP something.

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Dale

powershell I needed to ZIP-up some log files in a number of subdirectories. In the past, I have used the PKZIP utility.

I couldn’t find my copy of PKZIP Sad smile

“Doesn’t PowerShell have a compress-archive command?”
’Why, yes it does!’

Two commands later:

$files=get-childitem *.log -Recurse compress-archive $files -DestinationPath c:\data\AllTheLogFiles

I had my AllTheLogFiles.Zip file.

Getting the user name for a given security identifier (SID)

Posted on June 28, 2018 by Dale

Two lines of Powershell code:

PS C:\> $osid=New-Object system.security.principal.securityidentifier("S-1-5-21-593069383-354653268-975305329-98179")

PS C:\> Write-Host $osid.translate([system.security.principal.ntaccount])

Output is in the form of <DOMAIN>\<USERID>

ie. NODDYLAND\admin-bike01

Reference:
Microsoft: Well-known security identifiers in Windows operating systems

Getting a list of users in a particular AD Group

Posted on January 15, 2018 by Dale

Get-ADGroup "<GROUP NAME>" -Properties Member | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Member | Get-ADUSer -properties Displayname,Description,EmailAddress | Select Name,Displayname,Description,EmailAddress

will cause the following to display

Name Displayname Description EmailAddress ---- ----------- ----------- ------------ fkjhsd Fred Smith Tech Support naveed.arshad@noddyland.com fhdfdf Bill Burke Manager bill.burke@noddyland.com wrfvvv Alice Cooper Test account alice.cooper@noddyland.com

How to output to a file?
Get-ADGroup "<GROUP NAME>" -Properties Member | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Member | Get-ADUSer -properties Displayname,Description,EmailAddress | Select Name,Displayname,Description,EmailAddress |Export-CSV 'c:\data\temp\<GROUP NAME>.csv'

Wouldn’t Get-ADGroupMember be a better choice than Get-ADGroup?
Yes, it would. If the group is not a large group. If it has a large number of members, you’ll run into the following error:

get-adgroupmember : The size limit for this request was exceeded

Active Directory has a default retrieval limit of 5000 objects for Get_ADGroupMember (and Get-ADPrincipalGroupMembership, and Get-ADAccountAuthorizationGroup).

Getting a list of users in your AD domain via Powershell

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Dale

Get-ADUser -Filter * -Properties HomeDirectory,LastLogonDate | Select-Object Name, LastLogonDate, HomeDirectory

will cause the following to display

Name LastLogonDate HomeDirectory ---- --------------------- ---------------

CollinsP   11/12/2015 6:04:12 AM \\wisefaq.com\HomeDrive\CollinsP
SprouleK   19/12/2015 2:08:12 PM \\wisefaq.com\HomeDrive\SprouleK
ReithP     23/12/2015 8:45:54 PM \\wisefaq.com\HomeDrive\ReithP

How to output to a file?
Get-ADUser –Filter * -Properties HomeDirectory,LastLogonDate | Select-Object Name, LastLogonDate, HomeDirectory | Export-CSV 'c:\temp\AllDomainUserNames.CSV'

This article seem familar? That will be because I wrote how to do this with Quest Active Server Roles Powershell Module, back in 2010.

The Microsoft page on Get-ADUser is here.

Getting a list of printers published in an Active Directory domain

Posted on October 22, 2015 by Dale

So I need to get a list of print servers and printers in the domain.

Using Powershell.

Looking around the interwebs, I found a PowerShell commandline here which formed the basis of this commandline:
Get-ADObject -LDAPFilter "(objectCategory=printQueue)" -Properties cn, drivername, location, printername, portname, servername | select portname, cn, drivername, location, printername, servername | Format-Table -Property * -AutoSize | Out-String -Width 4096 | Out-File C:\wisefaq\printerlist.txt

Which outputs to a text file, like this:
portname cn drivername location printername servername -------- -- ---------- -------- ----------- ---------- {101.112.138.188} PRT001-APPLELWR001 APPLE LASERWRITER II US/UT/Boort/10 Anytown St APPLELWR001 PRT001.noddyland.com {112.142.229.22} PRT001-LZR960-2 Dataproducts LZR 960 PS US/UT/Boort/99 Anytown St LZR960-2 PRT001.noddyland.com {101.192.107.56} PRT001-LZR960-1 Dataproducts LZR 960 PS US/UT/Boort/99 Anytown St LZR960-1 PRT001.noddyland.com {101.192.107.56} PRT001-LZR960-3 Dataproducts LZR 960 PCL US/UT/Boort/99 Anytown St LZR960-3 PRT001.noddyland.com {101.46.14.220} PRT001-LZR960-4 Dataproducts LZR 960 PS US/UT/Boort/99 Anytown St LZR960-4 PRT001.noddyland.com {101.46.14.220} PRT001-LZR960-5 Dataproducts LZR 960 PCL US/UT/Boort/99 Anytown St LZR960-5 PRT001.noddyland.com

So why did I use Out-File instead of Export-CSV?
Export-CSV is refusing to output the {ip.addresses}. I don’t know why, and I’ve wasted an hour trying to work around the issue.

Update: December 2015
Adrian suggests that I could use Powershell Custom Objects to fix the issue of ip.addresses not outputting.

References:
PowerShell Quick Tip: Creating wide tables with PowerShell

Searching for Specific Printers in a Domain (Attributes for the printQueue Object)

Print-Queue class

PowerShell print server inventory script (looks very useful, but you need admin access to each of the printers)

How to tell a PC’s network link speed remotely

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Dale

By using PowerShell like this:

Get-WmiObject -class Win32_PerfRawData_Tcpip_NetworkInterface -ComputerName Localhost | Format-Table Name,@{label="LinkSpeed(MB)";Expression={$_.CurrentBandwidth/1000000 -as [int]}}

which will return this: