TN WW126 An introduction to Windows Powershell
Last updated: February 27th, 2025Description
- Author: Brian Schneider
- Published: February 27th, 2025
Details:
Description
A basic primer to Windows Powershell as a tool to maintain and troubleshoot Wonderware products.
- Author: Peter Farrell
- Published: 09/29/2015
- Applies to: Windows Powershell all versions
Details
Windows PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management framework from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and associated scripting language built on the .NET Framework. PowerShell provides full access to COM and WMI, enabling administrators to perform administrative tasks on both local and remote Windows systems. It is useful for writing new scripts and replacing old VBscripts, and it is a powerful tool that can be helpful when installing, maintaining, and troubleshooting issues involving Wonderware products.
WARNING - PowerShell can easily cause significant configuration changes, positive or negative — so it is recommended that you establish a test environment for your learning experiences. Also consider using the "-confirm" parameter to test configurations before execution for certain commands.
In PowerShell, administrative tasks are generally performed by cmdlets (pronounced command-lets), which are specialized .NET classes implementing a particular operation. Sets of cmdlets may be combined into scripts, executables (which are standalone applications), or by instantiating regular .NET classes (or WMI/COM Objects).[2][3] These work by accessing data in different data stores, like the file system or registry, which are made available to the PowerShell runtime via Windows PowerShell providers.
Windows PowerShell can execute four kinds of named commands:
cmdlets, which are .NET programs designed to interact with PowerShell
PowerShell scripts (files suffixed by .ps1)
PowerShell functions
standalone executable programs
Follow is a small sample of cmdlets available in Windows Powershell
| PowerShell (Cmdlet) | Description |
| get-process | Returns all currently running processes |
| Stop-Process -Name notepad Stop-Process -ID 2668 |
Stops a running process |
| systeminfo | Presents system information including hot fixes that have been applied |
| Get-ChildItem | List all files / directories in the (current) directory |
| Get-Content | Get the content of a file |
| Get-Command | List available commands |
| Get-Help | Help on commands |
| Clear-Host | Clear the screen |
| Copy-Item | Copy one or several files / a whole directory tree |
| Move-Item | Move a file / a directory to a new location |
| Remove-Item | Delete a file / a directory |
| Rename-Item | Rename a file / a directory |
| Get-Location | Display the current directory/present working directory. |
| Pop-Location | Change the current directory to the directory most recently pushed onto the stack |
| Push-Location | Push the current directory onto the stack |
| Set-Location | Change the current directory |
| Tee-Object | Pipe input to a file or variable, then pass the input along the pipeline |
| Write-Output | Print strings, variables etc. to standard output |
| Get-Process | List all currently running processes |
| Stop-Process | Stop a running process |
| Select-String | Print lines matching a pattern |
| Set-Variable | Set the value of a variable / create a variable |
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