PowerShell 2.0 Under Windows 7

December 2, 2009 by Steven Swafford

It is important to note that Windows 7 is the first operating system which shipped with PowerShell as part of the operating system. Visit the Windows PowerShell Blog for a listing of versions and downloads as well as a wealth of other information.

To access PowerShell all one must do is open the Run dialog or press Win+R and type PowerShell and press Enter. If you will be accessing PowerShell frequently then you may way to pin it to your task bar for future access. To tell the truth I have not worked with PowerShell in the past however the close that I look at this product the more I see a number of real world applications. Is this something you have employed and if so under what circumstances and did it solve your problem? I am interested to hear from those experiences you have encountered whether good or bad. During my initial investigation I ran across a number of cmdlets, PowerShell Community is one such resource I found.

Processor Details:

$computer = "LocalHost"
$namespace = "rootCIMV2"
Get-WmiObject -class Win32_Processor -computername $computer -namespace $namespace

<strong>Installed Memory:</strong>
<pre class="brush: xml">$strComputer = $Host
$RAM = WmiObject Win32_ComputerSystem
$MB = 1048576
"Memory: " + [int]($RAM.TotalPhysicalMemory /$MB) + " MB"

PowerShell seems to very powerful and now I just have to dig in deeper and determine how this all fits closely into software development as I am sure it does. Do you have any tips and tricks when it comes to items such as scripting a database, web application deployments, or automation in general?

Author: Steven Swafford

Highly motivated information technology professional with 16+ years of experience. Working as a software engineer Steven develops and maintains web based software solutions. As a skilled professional he is focused on the design and creation of software. Because communication skills are extremely important Steven continues to expand his knowledge in order to communicate clearly with all facets of business. Recently Steven has been leading efforts to standardize software development tools and technology, plans and coordinates web accessibility as applied to IT Solutions, and he is tackling application security in terms of best practices and implementation of the Security Development Life-cycle.