PowerShell City

Disabling bitlocker with PowerShell is as easy as you might not believe.

You must first unlock the drive

Unlock-BitLocker -MountPoint D:

Then you can do some object juggling to select the one you want fast using tab completion.

Something to consider, we know you can do this in the GUI, however the GUI i s point and click, where in the city of PowerShell you can use combo moves by combining cmdlets and saving on processing power, battery life and not sacrificing performance.

We all have different way to accomplish a task that is given to us. Sometimes we make mistakes and we are panicking to fix the errors better know as PowerShell error handling.

Sometimes, knowing your mistakes is better than googling or trying to the answers. I’m comfortable with PowerShell, the errors are defined in a pretty straight forward way.

The errors come out as objects with properties too and this can come in handing when you want your script to show a specific error for a certain function.

So take some time and look at cmdlets write-error and also using the cmdlet binding parameters found on built in PowerShell commands “-ErrorAction” and combining them with try, catch, and finally statements that are the dream team when it comes with error handling.

There are a number of different option regarding this and what you need, is what you should choose. try them all on and see what shoe fits.

Newer Version of PowerShell has a great deal of newer functionality and choices.

Notice how the break command drops into a debug prompt instead. This helps with Scripting and finding… bugs. so now that we have squashed that the next thing is to find was to have it help you to avoid red letters and failed automation. Share what you have done with it.

The best case scenario in my opinion of using variables is to leverage objects. I know some of the users prefer text only, but objects carry much more information, that can be logged or leveraged. Here is an example:

Having computer’s name vs and object with multiple properties.

The 3 last lines are are magic…

Having the same data in the variable and then manipulating them to give you what you want so that the data is applicable and even passed to more commands.

So lets say there is another propery or point of interest that needs to be associated with the computer and user….

Can you do that with text and then create a fancy excel sheet? maybe if you want to have panic attacks about deadlines. It is all about the objects of desire lol.

Lets add a serial number:

Lets get Dynamic like a duo (no Microsoft pun) with dynamic Data

This object is now dynamic and can be used to extrapolate data inside of a remote script, report, or function.

Brain Check… share your real world applications of create dynamic and static objects.

If you cannot think of any then use the code to inventory your home PCs. Don’t forget to add the serial number:

Get-CimInstance Win32_bios

Don’t Forget to select the properties you need or expand them to just get the inside of the object.

Want to learn what is selectable with any object? Indicate the object and pipe it to get-member.

Get-CimInstance Win32_bios | get-member

One of my favorite reasons I love PowerShell is because can tap into its programming roots for added power. I will demonstrate later in my post.

Here is why:

An OLE Automation date is implemented as a floating-point number whose integral component is the number of days before or after midnight, 30 December 1899, and whose fractional component represents the time on that day divided by 24. For example, midnight, 31 December 1899 is represented by 1.0; 6 A.M., 1 January 1900 is represented by 2.25; midnight, 29 December 1899 is represented by -1.0; and 6 A.M., 29 December 1899 is represented by -1.25.

The base OLE Automation Date is midnight, 30 December 1899. The minimum OLE Automation date is midnight, 1 January 0100. The maximum OLE Automation Date is the same as DateTime.MaxValue, the last moment of 31 December 9999.

first there are not many reasons to convert excel to csv (who am I kidding it is tons). I ran across this issue helping a friend. I can’t believe how incredibly complicated it was to convert the time into a format that was more legible inside of the CSV file.

I think we can agree that sometimes things are harder than what they need to be and I will ensure that this can go easier specially if you take the time to make a function so that you can recall the fix in the future.

Here is a partial solution found as method:

It clicked immediately that .Net had the solution in its C# library….hopefully. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.datetime.fromoadate?view=netcore-3.1

After visiting the link and reading I was more confused and still hopeful I had remembered C#/.net calls look different in PowerShell.

After playing with the way it was called.

now to test this solution in a different form of reusable code:

here it is with plain input:

lets see the final solution

I know this one was lengthy but I felt like it helped really breakdown the process for beginners.

now the the script/Code:

$data=@()
$data+=New-Object psobject -Property @{name="Xajuan"; Age="" ; Birthdate=41526}
$data+=New-Object psobject -Property @{name="Tyesha"; Age="" ; Birthdate=33172}
$data+=New-Object psobject -Property @{name="Xajuan"; Age="" ; Birthdate=31234}





function Convert-FromOATime
{
<#
.Synopsis
   Coverting OA time to regular time. 
.DESCRIPTION
   A proof of concept blending programming knowledge and scripting.
.EXAMPLE
   $data.birthdate | Convert-FromOATime
.EXAMPLE
   $data | select name,@{name='age';e={(get-date -format yyyy) -($($_.birthdate|Convert-FromOATime|get-date -format yyyy))}},@{name='birthdate';e={$_.birthdate|Convert-FromOATime}}
.NOTES
   By Xajuan Smith
   PowerShell.city
#>
[cmdletbinding()]
param([parameter(Mandatory,ValueFromPipeline,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName)][Alias('Time')][string[]]$Date)

begin{
        $results=@()
     }

Process{
            foreach($Item in $Date)
            {
                $results+=[DateTime]::FromOADate($($Item)) | get-date -Format MM-dd-yyyy

            }
       }


end{$results}


}#end Function


#example
$data | select name,@{name='age';e={(get-date -format yyyy) -($($_.birthdate|Convert-FromOATime|get-date -format yyyy))}},@{name='birthdate';e={$_.birthdate|Convert-FromOATime}}

Planning is vital to any infrastructure environment and when scripting or using PowerShell is by no means any different. when you add a high level plan/structure and use it as a map of to-dos and things you want to add later and things you would like to change.

Failure to plan can mean data loss and errors that go uninvestigated. Either of which is not what you want to lay eye on or expose ears to. Error handling should go hand in hand with any PowerShell approached solution to cover your bases.

One way is to write a road map of comments in your script prior to coding. reference snippets as often as you can. enough detail so that you wont be lost of you reference that script or function 2 or 3 years from current date to create easily understood code and recycle.