WMI Win32_Volume Class using PowerShell

I've been playing around this weekend with PowerShell and the Win32_Volume WMI class and have written some PowerShell scripts to exploit this class.

To get the volumes on a system is trivial:

$volumes = Get-WMIObject Win32_Volume

This returns an array of volume objects which you can iterate through and display. To display the whole collection, or to just see the first volume, you could do this:

$volumes
$volumes[0]

See here for a simple script that obtain the volumes on a system and then displays their information. Then look at this script to run a chkdsk on the system.

You can also use a method to determine how badly fragmented a volume is, and another to run a defrag pass on a volume. Look here for a script to display a defrag analysis of the C:\ and here to actually defrag the disk.

 

[Later Update]

The Win32_Volume WMI class is not available on all versions of Windows - I ran the scripts on a Longhorn B3 server.

 

Technorati tags: PowerShell, WMI, Win32_Volume

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Has Shipped

According to a MS source, SP1 for VS 2005 R2 has now shipped. It's meant to be available on the Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 page, but it's not up yet. It should be there by the end of the day.

Technorati tags: Virtual Server, VS 2005 R2 SP1

NIST Security Controls Guide Published

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published a 387-page Guide for Assessing the Security Controls in Federal Information Systems, which you can freely download as a PDF document. Technically this document is a draft (the third draft), but even so, it contains good information on the fundamentals of security controls and details on the process you undergo to develop and implement controls. This is a useful read for anyone in the IT Security business.

Technorati tags: NIST, Security, Security Controls

Office Communications Server Forums

Microsoft has setup a series of Office Communications Server 2007 Beta Forums. The forums are part of the TechNet forums and cover the entire OCS 2007 product. If you have questions about OCS, this is a place to ask them.

[LATER] The OCS forums have moved - see my later blog post at: http://tfl09.blogspot.com/2007/08/ocs-2007-technet-forums-are-back.html

Technorati tags: Office Communications Server, OCS 2007, TechNet, Microsoft

IIS7 Added to Longhorn Server Core

MS has announced that IIS7 Added to Server Core.  This sounded fantastic, at first, till I read the fine print. While IIS will be supported, there is no .NET support still, thus no PowerShell support. :-(

Live Writer Beta 2 Ships

Microsoft has just released an updated beta, dubbed Beta 2, of it's Live Writer blogging tool. I use Live Writer pretty much exclusively for this blog. The biggest feature, for me at least, is in the inline spell checking.

Get the beta and learn more over at the Writer Zone

 

Technorati tags: Windows Live Writer

PowerShell Dissassebler for the .NET Reflector

.NET fans will know all about the .NET Reflector. A great tool to understand more about .NET "under the covers".  A neat feature of the Reflector is the plug-in library - with a huge number of plug-ins available.

And I've just noticed a plug-in that dis-assembles MSIL into a PowerShell Script. Cool!!!

 

Technorati tags: powershell, .NET Reflector