Richard Siddaway's Blog

PowerShell Deep Dive Agenda

The agenda for the PowerShell Deep Dive is available here http://www.theexpertsconference.com/us/2011/powershell-deep-dive/agenda/

There are still a few seats left at the discount price – but you need to hurry.  See

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/2011/03/30/only-2-days-left-to-save-1000-on-powershell-deep-dive-registration.aspx

Scripting Games 2011–Countdown

The Scripting Games will start in 1 weeks time on 4 April

The judges have been announced -

http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2011/03/26/here-come-da-judge-here-come-da-judge.aspx

Now that is a scary looking crew 

The judging criteria have been announced

http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2011/03/27/judges-criteria-for-powershell-2011-scripting-games.aspx

There’s also a post on getting the most from the Games

http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2011/03/25/making-the-most-of-the-2011-scripting-games.aspx

Good luck to all participants.

Regular Expression Slides

The slides, scripts and cheat sheet from Tome’s regular expression presentation are now available

http://cid-43cfa46a74cf3e96.office.live.com/browse.aspx/PowerShell%20User%20Group/March%202011

Regular Expression Recording

The recording of the PowerShell UG meeting last night is available

Richard Siddaway has invited you to view a Microsoft Office Live Meeting recording.
View Recording
Recording Details
Subject: Regular Expressions in PowerShell
Recording URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/view
Recording ID: TRG55D
Attendee Key: Bd+;%:H8Z

This Office Live Meeting invitation is a personal invitation meant only for you. It should not be forwarded. If you received this email by mistake or require Live Meeting Assistance, please refer to the Live Meeting Assistance Center at http://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidLiveMeeting?p1=12&p2=en_US&p3=LMInfo&p4=support

Enjoy

PowerShell Deep Dive Line Up

Dmitry has collected all of the currently available information on the upcoming PowerShell Deep Dive

http://dmitrysotnikov.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/powershell-deep-dive-recap/

PowerShell UG Live Meeting tomorrow

Don’t forget the UK PowerShell UG meeting tomorrow – 22 March. Details from

http://richardspowershellblog.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/uk-powershell-groupmarch-2011/

PowerShell and WMI–Chapters 6 & 7 in MEAP

Chapters 6 and 7 have been released for PowerShell and WMI. It is available through the Manning Early Access Program (MEAP) at http://www.manning.com/siddaway2/
The available chapters cover:

1. Solving Administrative Challenges
2. Using PowerShell
3. WMI in Depth
4. Best Practices
5. System Documentation
6. Disk System
7. Registry

Chapters 8 to 10 covering the File system; Services and Processes; and Printers respectively are in the pipeline. I’m currently working on chapter 11 on Networking. The code to accompany the MEAP chapters is also available for download from the URL above.

PowerShell module for PKI

PowerShell MVP Vadims Podans has released a PowerShell module for working with PKI. It works against Windows 2003 /2003 R2/ 2008 and 2008 R2 Certificate Authorities.

If you are using Certificate Services in your environment you need this.  Download from http://pspki.codeplex.com/

WMI–Provider Load Failure

I’m currently writing Chapter 11 of PowerShell and WMI and its about using the WMI classes related to networking. I tried the Win32_NetworkAdapter on the HP laptop I use for writing and everything worked fine. Tried it on my Lenovo that I use as a Hyper-V server and got a Provider Load failure error.

PS> Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_NetworkAdapter
Get-WmiObject : Provider load failure
At line:1 char:14
+ Get-WmiObject <<<<  -Class Win32_NetworkAdapter
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: (:) [Get-WmiObject], ManagementException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : GetWMIManagementException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetWmiObjectCommand

This is definitely in the realms of not good. At this point I was imagining WMI rebuild or even a complete server rebuild.

I tried

Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration

and it worked. Now that’s confusing.

Did a Bing search and found this post

http://blogs.infosupport.com/blogs/markw/archive/2009/02/26/Win32_5F00_network-adapter-_2200_provider-load-failure_2200_.aspx

which walks through how to use wbemtest to see what is happening.

Turns out like the author of the post I had the Intel WiFi tools installed but didn’t have an Intel wireless card. The LAN card is Intel so I guess that’s where the tools came from.  The wifiwmip.dll seems to be to blame for the problem. 

Removed the intel WiFi tools and everything now works.

PowerShell Deep Dive–more sessions announced

The agenda for the first PowerShell deep dive is filling up

http://www.theexpertsconference.com/us/2011/general-information/2011-powershell-deep-dive/

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/2011/03/13/more-deep-dive-info-including-abstracts-from-the-powershell-team.aspx

The speaker list includes:

Jeffrey Snover

Bruce Payette

Kenneth Hansen

Don Jones

Kirk Munro

Brandon Shell

Jeffrey Hicks

Sean Kearney

James O’Neill

oh yeah -  and me

This is going to be an awesome two days – if you are interested in PowerShell you need to be there

2011 Scripting Games

Message from the Microsoft Scripting Guy

The 2011 Scripting Games begin on April 4, 2011 and run through April 15, 2011. What is the Scripting Games, you may ask? Well simply put, the Scripting Games are the premier learning event of the year for IT Pro’s and others who wish to master Windows PowerShell. Comprising 10 events, a registered contestant has seven days to create a solution to a scenario driven problem and post their code to a MVP maintained script repository for evaluation by a panel of internationally recognized judges. Daily leaderboards and prize drawings help to maintain the suspense throughout the two-week international event.

During the 2011 Scripting Games hundreds of contestants will submit thousands of scripts that will be reviewed by dozens of judges. Hundreds of thousands of spectators from all around the world will view the games themselves. Last year, participants from more than 100 countries participated in the Scripting Games. With an emphasis on real world scripting scenarios and problems, the scripts will be of immediate value to both the participants and to the spectators.

Preparation for the 2011 Scripting Games is already underway, with a learning guide, step-by-step tutorials, videos and other resources being generated on a daily basis. The 2011 Scripting Games all in one page is the portal for the games themselves. The 2010 Scripting Games all in one page is still available, as are the events from the 2009 Scripting Games.

Action: Grab the 2011 Scripting Games badge and display it on your blog to show your support for the games.

PowerShell Deep Dive sessions

I’ve previously mentioned the PowerShell Deep Dive in April - http://msmvps.com/blogs/richardsiddaway/archive/2011/02/25/powershell-deep-dive.aspx

The first session announcements have been made - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/archive/2011/03/05/a-few-deep-dive-abstracts.aspx

I’m thrilled to be presenting a session on WMI – gems and gotchas.

Its going to be a great few days