HOWTO: Calculate Elapsed Business Hours Using PowerShell

May 11, 2026December 21, 2018 by Robbie

Update: 4/11/2022: An individual by the name of Adam Cook has taken the premise of this script and transformed it into a far more robust PowerShell module and published it on Github. I wanted to ensure I gave his project all the visibility I could. The Github page is available here: https://github.com/codaamok/PSBusinessTime Thanks Adam! Have … Read more

HOWTO: Force (really) WSUS Clients to Check in on Demand

May 11, 2026November 25, 2018 by Robbie

You’re most likely here because you are an IT administrator and you have a network that deploys Windows Updates via Windows Server Update Services or WSUS. Perhaps you’re relatively new to WSUS or you’re a veteran that has been using the product since its inception. In either case, you are mostly frustrated because even in … Read more

HOWTO: PowerShell Function Return Quirk

May 10, 2026July 9, 2017 by Robbie

Have you ever been using PowerShell, created a function that called another function and then tried to return data from the parent function only to discover that the returned data included more ‘stuff’ than you intended? This quick blog post demonstrates why that is and presents one workaround to prevent it in the future.

Clear-Host

Function Show-OutputMessage
{
    # Note that the only thing this function does is write to the pipeline.  It does NOT return any data.
    Write-output "An important message"
}

Function Run-Function
{
    # Inside a function, we call a sub function that inside that calls write-output. 
    Show-OutputMessage

    # Let's assume this parent function performs some kind of operation that returns a status code.  So the only thing we want to return is the status, ie:
    return "OK"
}

$Status = Run-Function
if($Status -ne "OK") { write-host "It's broken" -ForegroundColor Red } else { write-host "It's working” -ForegroundColor Green }

Clear-Host

Function Show-OutputMessage

{

# Note that the only thing this function does is write to the pipeline. It does NOT return any data.

Write-output "An important message"

}

Function Run-Function

{

# Inside a function, we call a sub function that inside that calls write-output.

Show-OutputMessage

# Let's assume this parent function performs some kind of operation that returns a status code. So the only thing we want to return is the status, ie:

return "OK"

}

$Status = Run-Function

if($Status -ne "OK") { write-host "It's broken" -ForegroundColor Red } else { write-host "It's working” -ForegroundColor Green }

HOWTO: Use Autohotkey to Toggle Windows Based on Window ID

May 10, 2026April 1, 2017 by Robbie

Autohotkey is an invaluable tool for automating tasks we perform hundreds of times per day without even thinking of it. The tasks many only take a few seconds each, but added up over the course of a year or more, it really adds up! One such common task involves switching between applications in Windows. Sure, you can click the application you want on the task bar or use Alt-Tab. But what happens when you have a ton of programs and tabs open?

You have to hunt.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just press a keyboard shortcut to launch/resume any application? This is where Autohotkey excels. You can configure it for example to toggle between applications based on their window title. But what if you can’t use the window title? This post shows you how to toggle between an application where the title constantly changes and you otherwise have nothing consistent about the application with which to configure Autohotkey to use.

HOWTO: Run Process Monitor on a Remote Machine from the Command Line

May 10, 2026February 15, 2017 by Robbie

I have a treat for you today. I have finally solved something that has been a pain in my side for years now. Have you ever been in the following situation?

You are reviewing log files and discover that a remote computer (perhaps a virtual machine running on shared storage) is running wild and hammering on the disk. You need to figure out what exactly what processes and files are causing that disk IO. However perhaps that computer is always in use and you simply can’t log in locally to launch resource monitor or process monitor. You need ultimately to run Process Monitor remotely. Unfortunately you google this and discover that it’s not possible due to the amount of data that process monitor generates and can’t pass it all over the wire. So what do you do?

I found myself in this exact situation yet again today and finally decided to sit down and solve it once and for all. My googling revealed a suggestion in some forum to use psexec to run procmon.exe on the remote machine and then copy over the PML file to your machine for analysis. I’m afraid I couldn’t find that blog post so I can’t give credit to the original author of the idea. But there is a world of difference between an idea and a practical implementation and that’s what I have to share with you today.

Below is a PowerShell script that includes a function called Get-ProcMonData. It accepts just two parameters, a -ComputerName for the name of the remote computer you wish to connect to and -Duration for how long procmon will run for on the remote system. Note that the script is hardcoded to limit you to a maximum of 100 seconds as I discovered the hard way that Procmon generates an enormous amount of data and you can easily fill the remote drive if you’re not careful.

HOWTO: Add Computer to Group without Restart

May 10, 2026February 2, 2017 by Robbie

Credit where credit is due, this is taken directory from the blog below and is documented here only so I can easily find it again in the future. Source: https://deployhappiness.com/quick-tip-add-computer-to-group-gpupdate-without-restart Let’s say you add a computer to a group but you want that computer to gain that membership but can’t restart the system. What do … Read more

HOWTO: Restore Active Directory to a different server

May 10, 2026January 14, 2017 by Robbie

This HOWTO is a proof of concept to demonstrate a way to take an Active Directory environment on one server and restore it to a different server on an entirely different network. The scenario in this example is we have a domain controller which has a number of other third party applications installed and we wish to migrate just the AD portion to a new dedicated Active Directory server in a separate environment. Once completed, the old server will be permanently powered off.

We will have two systems, one called PRODDC1. This is our production system hosting Active Directory and all of our other applications. The second system is called initially NEWDC1. This is a fresh copy of Windows 2012 R2 with no configuration of any kind, not even a hostname or IP assigned. Crucially, these two systems are on isolated networks and cannot see each other.

On PRODDC1

From Server Manager, installed the Windows Server Backup Feature
Once installed, run Windows Server Backup and from the left menu choose Backup Once
Choose Custom and select only System State

HOWTO: Get Webroot Endpoints using Unity REST API and PowerShell

May 10, 2026November 18, 2016 by Robbie

Webroot has recently released a new REST API that allows us as administrators to pull detailed endpoint data programmatically. What this effectively means is that all of the information that is presented to us in the Webroot Global Site Manager can now be extracted directly and integrated into other processes. I very much wanted a script that would be able be able to run on a scheduled task and compare all the systems in Active Directory with those registered in Webroot and then report on those AD systems that either do not have Webroot installed or haven’t checked in for more than a week.

It took some reading and trial and error but I managed to create a PowerShell script that can connect to Webroot and pull all of the details for every endpoint for a given keycode into an object which you can then do whatever you want with. I figured I’d save you the frustration of figuring out how to make this. Of course this code is presented as is. It’s working for me but your mileage may vary.

Here’s how it works:

HOWTO: Check CPU Usage of VMs with VMware Workstation

May 10, 2026October 30, 2016 by Robbie

Do you use VMware Workstation on Windows? Do you run more than a handful of VMs? Have you ever had your host CPU pinned by one of the instances of vmware-vmx.exe but the only way you could figure out which VM was the issue was by logging into each one and checking CPU usage there? I found myself in this situation and figured there had to be a better way. I realized that each VM runs as its own separate vmware-vmx.exe process. I further figured out that the .VMX file that includes the name of the running VM is part of the command line arguments used to call it. Putting this information together, I wrote a simple PowerShell script that is intended to be run on the Windows Host that will show all running VMs and their current CPU usage. Note that the totals are for each VM, not of the host. This is why multiple VMs can show 100% usage.

Deploy Office 365 and HA ADFS From Scratch

May 10, 2026October 18, 2016 by Robbie

Are you interested in Office 365 and ADFS but are intimidated by it and not sure where to begin? If that’s the case, you’ve come to the right place. I have been studying to write my 70-346 (Managing Office 365 Identities Exam) and realized that I was still really weak on ADFS and how all the pieces work together. I decided I wanted to build a fully fleshed out ADFS environment in my own lab complete with a new Office 365 tenant and ADFS configured in high availability with the recommended 4 servers (redundant federation and redundant proxy servers). So that’s what I did and I’m going to walk you through the entire setup, starting from the very beginning.

[toc]

Prerequisites

All the links download are free for testing purposes. To follow along with this HOWTO you will need:

[table]
Description,URL/Notes
Registered Domain, Including access to modify public DNS records – I used www.vanlab.net
Purchased SSL certificate that you have saved as a .PFX file, I recommend a wildcard certificate. I used one from www.cheapsslsecurity.com
Office 365 for Business Trial Setup, https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-for-business-free-trial
Access to a phone, Capable of receiving text messages or phone calls
PFSense Firewall, https://pfsense.org/download/
Windows 2012 R2 180 Day Trial, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2012-r2
Windows 10 Enterprise 90 Day Trial, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-10-enterprise
Exchange 2016, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49161
Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API, http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkId=258269
Office 2016 Administrative Templates, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49030
Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=41950
Azure AD Module, http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=236297
[/table]

Credit where credit is due. This HOWTO is based on basic ADFS deployment documentation found here: :
http://nolabnoparty.com/en/adfs-3-0-setup-upn-suffix-for-office-365-sso-pt-1/