To find which ports are in use with PowerShell, list the listening TCP ports with Get-NetTCPConnection and add the process that owns each one: Below I find who’s using one specific port, write a quick in-use test, check UDP ports, compare with netstat and test ports on other computers. A list of my own PC’s … Read more
To find the location of an executable in PowerShell, run Get-Command and read its Source property. It searches the folders in your PATH, just like running the program does: Output: Below I look up several programs at once, list every copy with -All and where.exe, and find where a running program lives. I used only … Read more
To find the most recent file in a directory with PowerShell, list the files with Get-ChildItem, sort them by LastWriteTime from newest to oldest, and keep the first one: Output: LastWriteTime is the date Windows shows as Date modified. I ran every example in PowerShell 7.6 and Windows PowerShell 5.1 against the same sample folder, … Read more
To get all properties of an object in PowerShell, pipe it to Format-List with an asterisk. You get every property name with its value: To see just the names and types, use Get-Member -MemberType Property instead. Below I compare both, loop through properties in a script, find hidden members and dig into nested objects. I … Read more
To get BIOS information using PowerShell, query the Win32_BIOS class with Get-CimInstance. It shows the manufacturer, BIOS version, release date and serial number without a restart: It works without admin rights in PowerShell 7 and 5.1. Below I pick the useful properties, check UEFI and Secure Boot, query remote PCs and build an inventory report. … Read more
To move a file to a folder in PowerShell, use Move-Item with the file in -Path and the folder in -Destination. The file keeps its name and disappears from the original folder: Output: That’s the whole job when everything is where you expect. The rest of this guide covers the cases that go wrong. I … Read more