Bijay Kumar 
The not equal operator in PowerShell is -ne. It returns True when two values are different, and it ignores case for text: Output: PowerShell doesn’t support !=. Writing if (5 != 3) fails with “Unexpected token ‘!=’ in expression or statement.” I ran every example in PowerShell 7.6 and Windows PowerShell 5.1, with the same … Read more
Start-Process starts a program or script as a separate process. Add -Wait to pause your script until it finishes, -ArgumentList to pass arguments and -PassThru to get a process object back, including the exit code: Output: In this guide, I’ll cover the parameters you’ll use most, the argument-quoting trap, output redirection, running as administrator, and … Read more
Proper error handling is absolutely critical when developing PowerShell scripts, especially for production environments. One of the most powerful error handling techniques in PowerShell is throwing exceptions with custom messages. Over my years working with PowerShell, I’ve found that a PowerShell script should show proper exception messages, which can save hours of troubleshooting time. In … Read more
To delete user profiles using PowerShell in Windows 11, find the profile with Get-CimInstance Win32_UserProfile and pipe it to Remove-CimInstance in an elevated window. That removes the folder and the registry entry together: Deleting a profile can’t be undone, so below I list profiles safely, find stale ones and preview the removal with -WhatIf. I … Read more
To generate SSH keys with PowerShell, run ssh-keygen, which ships with Windows 10 and 11 as part of the built-in OpenSSH client. Ed25519 is the recommended key type: It asks where to save the key and for a passphrase, then creates a private key and a .pub public key. Below I check OpenSSH is installed, … Read more
To open PowerShell in a folder, open the folder in File Explorer, click the address bar, type pwsh (or powershell for Windows PowerShell 5.1) and press Enter. PowerShell starts with that folder as its location. In Windows 11 you can also right-click inside the folder and choose Open in Terminal. Below I cover shortcuts, command-line … Read more
To list directories and files in PowerShell, use Get-ChildItem. On its own, it lists every folder and file in the current location. Add -Directory for folders only, -File for files only and -Recurse to include subfolders. Here it is on a sample Projects folder I created for this article: Output: The Mode column tells you … Read more
To track user login history using PowerShell, read successful logon events (ID 4624) from the Security log with Get-WinEvent in an elevated window. Each event records who signed in, when and how: Below I turn those events into a readable report, find failed sign-ins, and show a history you can read without admin rights. I … Read more
To show logged-in users with PowerShell, run quser (short for query user). It lists every user signed in to the computer, including Remote Desktop sessions, with their session ID, state, idle time and logon time. Two other commands answer slightly different questions: Command What it returns Remote PCs quser Every signed-in user and session, active … Read more
To remove a computer from a domain with PowerShell, run Remove-Computer as administrator, name the workgroup to join and restart: The credential needs rights to remove the computer account. Below I check the join state, preview the command, remove remote PCs and clean up AD. My test PC isn’t on a domain, so I used … Read more
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