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Powershell Commands Collection

Jan 05, 2025, 7 min read

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Powershell Powershell, bring more helpful and memorable command which can reuse on next time 😅😅😅

Extract zip file

You can use Expand-Archive for extract ZIP file, for example

Expand-Archive .\translators-main.zip -DestinationPath .

The command will extract the translators-main.zip file in current folder

Restart wsl to claim memory

You can use --shutdown flag to restart the wsl machine or you can setup .wslconfig on PATH $env:USERPROFILE, read more: Advanced settings configuration in WSL. More about scenarios you can read in StackOverFlow - How can I reduce the consumption of the vmmem process?

Note

Shutdown to reclaim resource

# Shutdown WSL to reclaim resource
wsl --shutdown

Info

Set new configuration

.wslconfig
# Update new info for wsl2
[wsl2]
memory=3GB # Set the limit memory can give for wsl
# Try shutdown after change configuration
wsl --shutdown

Common wsl command

Official documentation: Basic commands for WSL and Remove WSL

# Update wsl
wsl --update
 
# Check the list subsystem running
wsl --list --running
 
# Set default linux distribution
wsl --set-default <Distribution Name>
 
# Shutdown the wsl
wsl --shutdown
 
# Terminate linux distribution
wsl --terminate <Distribution Name>
 
# List distribution you have on Window machine
wsl --list
 
# List available Linux distributions
wsl --list --online
 
# Set WSL version to 1 or 2
wsl --set-version <distribution name> <versionNumber>
 
# Export a distribution
wsl --export <Distribution Name> <FileName>
 
# Import a distribution
wsl --import <Distribution Name> <InstallLocation> <FileName>

Invoke-WebRequest alias of wget & curl

Reference: StackExchange - PowerShell equivalent of curl - Invoke-WebRequest

You can use curl alias of command Invoke-WebRequest

# Use on curl style
curl -Uri "https://www.example.com/myfile.txt" -OutFile myfile.txt
 
# Use on altenative
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://www.example.com/myfile.txt" -OutFile myfile.txt

Because the powershell output work really special, object-type I think so. Thus, you can use select-object to get the what actually you want, such as Content

# Output not raw string
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://www.google.com | Select-Object 'Content'

For expand the raw string, you can use -ExpandProperty flag like example

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://www.google.com | Select-Object -ExpandProperty 'Content'

Go to the administrator

Use can use start-process with -verb flag on runas mode to change your shell to Administrator role

# Open Windows Terminals (New version if you install)
Start-Process wt -Verb runAs
 
# Open powershell in Terminal
Start-Process powershell -Verb runAs

But on the currently, Windows just ready to release sudo command for help you doing super user command can do without open terminal with Administrator. Read more at: Sudo for Windows

Reload $PROFILE

When you want to reload or apply plugin which you put on your $PROFILE, you can make it straightway with command

. $PROFILE

Enable Hyper-V service

Info

Information about Issue StackOverFlow - How to disable Hyper-V in command line?]

Command Prompt (CMD)

In an elevated Command Prompt write this

# To disable
bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off
# To enable
bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto

Restart to take effect or you can do it with command

# Restart in one minute left
shutdown /r
 
# Restart immediately
shutdown /r /t 0
 
# Restart after time
shutdown /r /t TIME

Powershell

Run in administrator before execute this

To disable

# To disable
Disable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-All
 
# To enable
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-All

And restart or use command

# Restart in one minute left
shutdown /r
 
# Restart immediately
shutdown /r /t 0
 
# Restart after time
shutdown /r /t TIME

Get execute policy

Try to list all permission of powershell of currently user

Get-ExecutionPolicy -List

View all permission of user

Use whoami command to view

whoami /all

Set and change permission of file

Documentation: How to change file permissions on Windows via powershell / cmd?

To change and set permission of file or folder in powershell, you can use Get-Acl and Set-Acl

# Copy permission from dog --> cat
Get-Acl -Path "C:\Dog.txt" | Set-Acl -Path "C:\Cat.txt"

Or we can use icacls to handle with same situation. Read more tutorial and explanation

#  grant the group FileAdmins 'Delete' and 'Write DAC' permissions to C:\demo\example
icacls "C:\demo\example" /grant:r FileAdmins:(D,WDAC)

If you want to create 400 permission for your ssh-key or readonly file for currently user, you can use

# Give current user explicit read-permission
icacls.exe $path /GRANT:R "$($env:USERNAME):(R)"
# Disable inheritance and remove inherited permissions
icacls.exe $path /inheritance:r

Create new file

Explore more about methodology: How to Use PowerShell to Create a File?

There is more of stuff way for create new file, and one of popular is use New-Item

New-Item -Path "C:\Logs\NewLog.txt" -ItemType File

In another, you can use Out-File or Set-Content

# Use Out-File
"Hello World" | Out-File -FilePath "C:\Logs\NewLog.txt"
 
# Use Set-Content
Set-Content -Path "C:\Logs\NewLog.txt" -Value "Hello World"

Find the string in documentation

If you want to find the same idea of grep in Powershell, you can try with. Read more at PowerShell equivalent to grep -f

# Use Select-String with regex pattern
ipconfig --help | Select-String -Pattern "/all"
 
# Use findstr function.
# Look the help of function
findstr /?
# Try to find include str
ipconfig --help | findstr /I all
# Uses specified string as a literal search string.
ipconfig --help | findstr /C:"/all"

Command can be used

Get-Help

Use the Get-Help cmdlet to display the syntax of any PowerShell cmdlet

# Basic
Get-Help Get-Service
 
# List example
Get-Help Get-Service -Examples
 
# Search onl
Get-Help Get-Service -Online

Get-Service

Helpful to know what services are installed on the system

# Basic
Get-Service
 
# Pick display name colume
Get-Service | select DisplayName
 
# Find some service with condition
Get-Service | Where-Object {$_.status -eq "stopped"}

Get-EventLog

Actually use PowerShell to parse your machine’s event logs using the Get-EventLog cmdlet

# View Application event log
Get-EventLog -Log "Application"
 
# View Security event log (Admin)
Get-EventLog -Log "Security"

Get-Process

Getting a list of available services, it’s often useful to be able to get a quick list of all the currently running processes

# Basic
Get-Process
 
# Get full process (parrent and child)
Get-Process -Name chrome
 
# You can use Get-Process with combine Stop-Process
Get-Process | Where-Object { $_.Name -eq "myprocess" } | Select-Object -First 1 | Stop-Process

Format-Table

 Used to format any output as a table

# Format list of process with fit-size
Get-Process | Format-Table -Property Name, CPU, Memory -AutoSize

Format-List

Output properties as a list, each on a new line

# gets services and lists each individually
Get-Service | Format-List

Where-Object

Where-Object is one of the most important cmdlets to know, as it enables you to take a dataset and pass it further down your pipeline for filtering

Get-Service | Where-Object {$_.status -eq "stopped"}

For-Each

The ForEach-Object cmdlet performs an operation against every item in a specified group of input objects.

Get-Process | ForEach-Object {Write-Host $_.name -foregroundcolor cyan}

Compare-Object

Useful to be able to compare two objects directly

Compare-Object "as" "ax"

Select-Object

The Select-Object cmdlet selects the specified properties of a single object or group of objects.

Get-Process | Sort-Object name -Descending | Select-Object -Index 0,1,2,3,4

Get-Member

One quality that makes PowerShell so versatile is that almost everything in PowerShell is an object consisting of a name, methods, and properties

Get-Service | Get-Member

Get-ChildItem

 Get-ChildItem returns all the items in one or more containers

# Basic
 Get-ChildItem .\content\
 
# Filter and include with folder
Get-ChildItem C:\Temp\* -Recurse -Include *taco*.txt

Out-GridView

 PowerShell output returns to the console window. However, if you need to interact with the output, you can use the Out-GridView cmdlet

Get-Process | Out-GridView

Base64 Decode and Encode

You can follow this question at StackOverFlow - How to decode a Base64 string?

Convert TO Base64

[Convert]::ToBase64String([Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes('Motörhead'))

Convert FROM Base64

[Text.Encoding]::Utf8.GetString([Convert]::FromBase64String('TW90w7ZyaGVhZA=='))

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