Analyze Windows event logs with AI: what to paste and what to check
A server restarted at 3 AM and the System log shows a Critical event you do not see every day: Kernel-Power, Event…
Guide
Step-by-step guides: how a command or feature works and how to use it on real Windows, Active Directory, VMware and Linux systems.
Compress-Archive: the files missing from the zip you sent
Support asked for the logs. You zipped the folder, attached it, and the reply says most of it is not there. The…
Check a domain expiry date and status from PowerShell with RDAP
A domain stops resolving and the first guess is DNS. Often it is not DNS: the registration expired, the registry put a…
Convert FILETIME to DateTime in PowerShell: 1601, 1970 and zero
Windows counts time from 1601, Unix counts it from 1970, and .NET counts its own ticks from the year 1. A file…
Copy-VMGuestFile: copying files into a VM with no network
Copy-VMGuestFile is the PowerCLI cmdlet that moves a file between your workstation and the inside of a virtual machine. It does not…
winget install: exact matching, silent flags and exit codes
Typing winget install git into a terminal and watching an installer appear is the whole of most people’s experience of the Windows…
ConvertTo-Json -Depth: the valid JSON that lost half your config
Quick answer ConvertTo-Json turns a PowerShell object into JSON text and ConvertFrom-Json turns JSON text back into an object. Both work in…
X509Chain: the certificate check that returns False for 25 reasons
A certificate check that answers with a single True or False is almost useless when it says False. The certificate might have…
sha256sum -c: the checksum line that is not two spaces
A checksum file is the least interesting part of a release until the day a download is corrupt, and then it is…
Get-FileHash: the comparison that reports a good file as bad
The two commands in the title answer the same question from opposite ends of the machine. Get-FileHash is a PowerShell cmdlet: it…