PSDrive
I started thing about the troubleshooting packs we were looking at in the last post. They are good but getting to them is a bit too hard. We can short cut some of it by creating a PowerShell drive. One of the great things about PowerShell is the provider system that exposes different data stores as if they were the file system – well this works for the file system as well.
Import the module as before
Import-Module troubleshootingpack
We don’t need a path because it is in the modules folder of the PowerShell install directory so it is automatically found.
Next thing we do is create a drive
New-PSDrive -Name tspack -PSProvider FileSystem -Root "C:\Windows\diagnostics\system" -Description "Maps to the troubleshooting packs"
Now when we look at the drives
PS> Get-PSDrive
Name Provider Root
---- -------- ----
Alias Alias
C FileSystem C:\
cert Certificate \
D FileSystem D:\
E FileSystem E:\
Env Environment
Function Function
HKCU Registry HKEY_CURRENT_USER
HKLM Registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
tspack FileSystem C:\Windows\diagnostics\system
Variable Variable
WSMan WSMan
Notice our new drive.
We can now access the troubleshooting system like this
PS> ls tspack:
Directory: C:\Windows\diagnostics\system
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
d---- 13/12/2008 15:33 AERO
d---- 13/12/2008 15:33 Audio
d---- 13/12/2008 15:33 Device
d---- 13/12/2008 15:33 DeviceCenter
d---- 13/12/2008 15:33 HomeGroup
d---- 13/12/2008 15:33 IEBrowseWeb
Yes Virginia I did use an alias. Its only in scripts or published stuff that I don’t like them.
And we can use the packs
Get-TroubleshootingPack -Path tspack:\networking
If you are going to be using these things a lot then the two lines
Import-Module troubleshootingpack
New-PSDrive -Name tspack -PSProvider FileSystem -Root "C:\Windows\diagnostics\system" -Description "Maps to the troubleshooting packs"
should be added to your profile or loaded as a function for immediate use.
The psdrive functionality can be used to create a lot of shortcuts like this.
Read the complete post at http://richardsiddaway.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!43CFA46A74CF3E96!2126.entry