Skip to main content

How to read Help Files (Part 1 of 7)

By
Every job has a mission critical skills that you need to master to perform your duties.  An airline pilot needs to master the safe landing.  A surgeon must master the usage of a scalpel.  You, as a PowerShell coder must master the reading of the help files. 

Reading help files is a regular them on my blog. I receive a lot of request for help.  Not only from moderating the forums on PowerShell.com, but I also get contacted out of the blue for consulting.  I look at the code that was generated and I sometimes just want to say “What were you thinking?”  I think that because of mistakes that reading the help files would have prevented from happening.

Normally not reading the help files is due to either a lack of knowledge about the help files or just a plain lack of motivation.  I cannot do anything about an individual’s motivation level, but I can help with the knowledge part.  The PowerShell help system is very robust. In this series, I plan on walking you through a detailed, step-by-step guide on how to use the help system.

Since PowerShell V3, we have had updatable help.  That means that you must update the help system before it provides you with any real information.  To do this, open PowerShell as an Administrator and execute the command Update-Help.  I suggest doing this in the shell.  You can do this in the ISE, but it takes longer.  Update-Help uses your internet connection to download the help files for all modules stored in the locations specified by $env:PsModulePath.  To see these locations:

$env:PSModulePath.Split(“;”)

PS C:\> $Env:PSModulePath.Split(";")
C:\Users\JASON\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules
C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules
C:\WINDOWS\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\PowerShell\ServiceManagement

If you install a new feature or software that has a PowerShell module, you will need to run Update-Help once again.  Update-Help will only update once every 24 hours so you may have to run

Update-Help –Force


Tomorrow we will look at the basic help file.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to list all the AD LDS instances on a server

By
AD LDS allows you to provide directory services to applications that are free of the confines of Active Directory.  To list all the AD LDS instances on a server, follow this procedure: Log into the server in question Open a command prompt. Type dsdbutil and press Enter Type List Instances and press Enter . You will receive a list of the instance name, both the LDAP and SSL port numbers, the location of the database, and its status.
Post a Comment
Read more

How to run GPResult on a remote client with PowerShell

By
In the past, to run the GPResult command, you would need to either physically visit this client, have the user do it, or use and RDP connection.  In all cases, this will disrupt the user.  First, you need PowerShell remoting enabled on the target machine.  You can do this via Group Policy . Open PowerShell and type this command. Invoke-Command –ScriptBlock {GPResult /r} –ComputerName <ComputerName> Replace <ComputerName> with the name of the target.  Remember, the target needs to be online and accessible to you.
Post a Comment
Read more

Error icon when creating a GPO Preference drive map

By
You may not have an error at all.  Take a look at the drive mapping below. The red triangle is what threw us off.  It is not an error.  It is simply a color representation of the Replace option of the Action field in the properties of the drive mappings. Create action This give you a green triangle. The Create action creates a new mapped drive for users. Replace Action The Replace action gives you a red triangle.  This action will delete and recreate mapped drives for users. The net result of the Replace action is to overwrite all existing settings associated with the mapped drive. If the drive mapping does not exist, then the Replace action creates a new drive mapping. Update Action The Update action will have a yellow triangle. Update will modify settings of an existing mapped drive for users. This action differs from Replace in that it only updates settings defined within the preference item. All other settings remain as configured on the ma...
1 comment
Read more