When you know only part of a folder name—such as Finance, Archive, or Project-A—PowerShell can search a local drive, mapped drive, or file share and return the matching folder paths. The recommended approach is Get-ChildItem with -Directory, followed by a wildcard filter such as -like ‘*Finance*’. This is useful in IT administration when you need … Read more
I’ve seen this confusion come up a lot in real admin work. Someone opens Windows Terminal, types a PowerShell command, and then assumes both tools are the same thing. They are not the same, and that difference matters when you build scripts, run admin tasks, or set up a better workflow. Once you understand it, … Read more
A file server’s free space can disappear faster than expected. I have seen a small company’s D:\CompanyData drive fill up because old application logs, user exports, and archived project files kept growing unnoticed. The Windows folder Properties dialog works for one quick check, but it does not scale when you need to inspect multiple folders … Read more
If you’ve spent any time working with strings in PowerShell, you already know that finding the first occurrence of something is easy — IndexOf() handles that in one line. But what about the second occurrence? Or the third? That’s where things get a little more interesting. In this tutorial, I’ll show you several ways to find the second occurrence … Read more
When I build server inventory scripts, I often collect values such as whether BitLocker is enabled, a service is running, or a disk is online. PowerShell returns these values as Boolean data: $true or $false. That works well in an if statement, but it becomes a problem when a CSV file, database field, or API … Read more
I’ve seen this problem a lot in file server cleanup work: one folder fills up with reports, and the destination folder already has some of those files. If you move everything blindly, you overwrite good files or create a messy duplicate situation. A simple PowerShell script solves it cleanly. You check whether each file already … Read more
Learn how to convert a canonical name to a distinguished name in PowerShell with a practical AD-focused script and clear examples. This guide shows the exact logic, common pitfalls, and a safe way to verify the result. I’ve had to do this when scripts received paths in canonical format, but Active Directory commands needed the … Read more
I have seen this issue many times during file migrations and software deployments. An admin receives a SHA256 checksum from a vendor, but an older application or internal inventory process still expects an MD5 value. The important detail is that you cannot truly convert a SHA256 hash into an MD5 hash. Hashes work in one … Read more
A few weeks ago, I was reviewing disk space and server health data from a small company’s monitoring export. Several reports stored changes as negative numbers, such as -12.5 GB or -340 MB, but the operations team needed positive values for a clean summary. Converting negative to positive in PowerShell is simple once you know … Read more
I’ve had plenty of moments where I needed to open PowerShell with another account just to test permissions, access a secured share, or run a script under an admin profile. It usually happens when your current session does not have the right rights, but you do not want to log off and back on. That … Read more
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