Welcome! 😊 This repository contains scripts that I use for carrying out various tasks in Windows, mostly (but not exclusively) administrative tasks.

You can either download each script individually or clone this entire repository. Most scripts are standalone and have no dependencies. One major exception is the MpDefinitionPackage module. (It's a PowerShell script module, meaning that you need its entire folder.) Most scripts are PowerShell, so you need to open a PowerShell window to run them.

Deals with Microsoft Store app packages.

• Inventory AppX Packages.ps1: The Get-AppxPackage cmdlet in PowerShell can find all installed Microsoft Store apps, but it does not do a good job of discovering their display names. At best, it can show the technical package name. This script lists all AppX packages installed for the current user account, along with their display names. It accepts a -Verbose switch and its output can be piped to Format-Table or Format-List. I believe it can be expanded to work machine-wide.
• Remove notorious AppX packages.ps1: This one is mostly for me, but others can find educational value in it. This script uninstalls a number of Microsoft Store apps for all users, without deleting their provisioned packages. I believe it can only run on Windows 10 version 1809 or later.

The following script belong to long-gone days. Nowadays, they are probably just dangerous, but not as dangerous as reckless things you find on the web.

• Reinstall AppX Packages.ps1: Resets and re-registers all AppX packages that were either shipped with Windows or were published by Microsoft. It is a safer alternative to the utterly sadistic one-liners abound the web that retrieve a list of all AppX packages and reset them all.
• Repair system apps.ps1: Re-registers all AppX packages installed in the "SystemApp" folder.

The following scripsts ask the BITS service for a list of all of its download and upload operations with a certain status and format the results in a certain form. More specifically:

All BITS jobs - Custom.ps1 asks the BITS service for list of all of its operation, then summarizes them, so that only the job status, job ID, display name, type, priority, bytes transferred, and bytes total are shown, along with a list of all files in each job.

• Get-WindowsFirewallStatus.cmd reports whether Windows Firewall is on or off. It requires Windows 10.

There was a period of time (2011–2016 timeframe) when Windows was plagued with bugs that corrupted the icon cache. These scripts were conceived in that time, as ways of mitigating the problem. I have long stopped using them though.

Refresh icon cache with MoveFile.cmd is the most effective of those but it is hard-coded to use an installed copy of MoveFile.exe from the Microsoft Sysinternals utility set.

• LastLogon.ps1 returns a list of all local user accounts, as well as the date and time of their last logon.
• LastLogon (Deprecated).vbs takes a long time to run, but returns a list of all local user accounts, as well as the date and time of their last logon. A matter of licensing: I did not write this script. The user who posted it was called Corvus1 and posted it in educational spirit. It's very old and outdated anyway; it's best not to use it.

• Repair-AllVolumes.ps1: Enumerates all fixed-disk volumes and sequentially runs Repair-Volume on them to scan them for errors.
• Repair-Windows.ps1: Repairs the online Windows instance by running DISM and SFC. Their logs are moved to the desktop.
• nGen Update.bat: Runs nGen inside Windows PowerShell. While PowerShell 6 and 7 run on .NET Core, Windows PowerShell and some Windows-exclusive PowerShell modules (which PowerShell 7 also loads) run on .NET Framework. Run this script with admin privileges whenever you update .NET Framework, or whenever you feel Windows PowerShell or PowerShell 7 for Windows are sluggish at launch time.

This entire folder, MpDefinitionPackage, is a PowerShell module that adds a cmdlet to your PowerShell: Build-MpDefinitionPackage. This cmdlet extracts Microsoft malware definition files from one computer and packages them up into a self-extracting archive, so that it can be installed on other computers. It requires WinRAR to work.

I conceived it as a script at a time when our site was suffering a network outage. Not only we couldn't update our antimalware, users were using USB flash drives (notorious for being malware carriers) to transfer files. Desperate times need desperate measures. I wrote this solution to keep our devices secure. Eventually, I turned it into a module.

Warning: I do not guarantee that this solution works. If you wish to update an entire network while preserving Internet bandwidth, the official solutions are Windows Server Update Services and System Center.

Warning: Residents of the United States of America must use this module in compliance with the Title 17 of United States Code, section 117 ("Limitations on exclusive rights: Computer programs"), article C. In other words, use this script only to keep your Microsoft antimalware product up-to-date and only when you have no other options.

• Clear-WindowsDefenderHistory.ps1: Clears the "protection history" of Microsoft Defender Antivirus (commonly referred to as Windows Defender). Starting with Windows 10 version 1703, this products no longer allows the users to clear the protection history via its UI. This "history", however, is each user's personal property. It is the owner's discretion to keep or clear it.

• PowerShell bug fix for 'Run with PowerShell' verb.reg correctly registers Windows PowerShell with File Explorer. It is also useful for those who have corrupted or otherwise undesirably altered their .ps1 registration.

The names of these scripts are self-explanatory.

• Log off.vbs
• Power off.vbs
• Power off (Alternative).vbs
• Restart.vbs
• Restart (Alternative).vbs

• Stop-Computer
• Restart-Computer

• "The Desktop FilesPsTools Primer", an article in the old TechNet Magazine, March 2007
• Win32_OperatingSystem class of CIMWin32
  • Reboot method
  • Shutdown method
  • Win32Shutdown method
  • Win32ShutdownTracker method
• Shutting Down Computers and Logging Off Users
  • Shutting Down a Computer
  • Restarting a Computer

• Firmware time is UTC.reg: Configures Windows to interpret the real-time clock as UTC time. Ordinarily, Windows interprets it as the local time corresponding to the time zone you've selected. Most Linux distros that interpret it as UTC, so you may need this script if you multi-boot a Linux distro along Windows. After applying this, restart the computer.

A group of PNG images with multilingual file names. This set is intended to represent a practical real-world use of Unicode.

See its documentation.

• Check automatic update services.ps1: Gives you a list of all update channels registered with the local instance of the Windows Update service. You are probably aware of the "Windows Update" and "Microsoft Update" channels. (The former contains updates for Windows only, the latter for all Microsoft products.) But not everyone knows about WSUS. This script is specifically useful to find out if the local computer is properly registered with WSUS.
• Install all with PowerShell.ps1: Scans the current folder for Windows updates that you've manually downloaded from Microsoft Catalog or WSUS, then invokes Add-WindowsPackage to install them all. There was a time when Microsoft released 1.5 GB worth of updates each month. I used to download them once and use this script to install them on several computers at home, thus saving 4.5 GB of download. (At work we use WSUS to save bandwidth.) Before you ask, no, the Delivery Optimization service does not reduce bandwidth consumption for you; it reduces bandwidth consumption for Microsoft's servers. It depends on a centralized peer coordination server on the Internet.
• Install all with DISM.exe.ps1: Scans the current folder for Windows updates that you've manually downloaded from Microsoft Catalog or WSUS, then invokes dism.exe to install them all.
• Opt in to Microsoft Update.ps1 and Opt out of Microsoft Update.ps1 are used to enable or disable the "Microsoft Update" channel on the local computer. These scripts are much faster than the cumbersome official GUI way, which I've long forgotten. When the "Microsoft Update" channel is not enabled, Windows uses the "Windows Update" channel instead.
• Run all MSPs.ps1: Scans the current folder and all its subfolders for .msp files and invokes Windows Installer to install them all. Many apps use MSPs to delivery updates. Microsoft Office 2016 and earlier are such apps.

The following two scripts are co-developed with Ramesh Srinivasan (the author of WinHelpOnline.com). More specifically, he wrote them in VBScript first, and I re-wrote them in PowerShell to support Unicode. Then, he credited me in his blog post and we added additional bits to support Windows 10. Back then, I knew zero about PowerShell and its philosophy, so, these scripts are unlike any other PowerShell scripts. In fact, they generate graphical message boxes.

• Find current wallpaper (Windows 7).ps1
• Find current wallpaper (Windows 8,10).ps1

This special folder contains source code that one should not run directly. Rather, PowerShell developers could read them, learn from them, or include portions of them in their PowerShell scripts.

• Demo - Message boxes in PowerShell.ps1: This scripts demonstrates how to invoke message boxes within a PowerShell script. Normally, one must not use message boxes (or Write-Host) inside PowerShell scripts. Before Windows 10, however, console apps had serious problems displaying Unicode characters, so I used message boxes instead.
• Demo - Pipline-ready function.ps1: Demonstrates how PowerShell passes objects through the pipeline.
• Function library.psm1: Contains a number of reusable functions. I've chosen the .psm1 filename extension to prevent it from being accidentally run as a script, but it is not a real module. Each function has its own local help. The functions include:
  • Test-ProcessAdminRights: Returns $True when the process running this script has administrative privileges
  • Test-UserAdminMembership: Returns $True when the user account running this script is a member of the local Administrators group.
  • Unregister-ScheduledTaskEx: Unregisters several scheduled tasks whose names matches a wildcard patten (not regex)
  • Remove-RegistryValues: Attempts to remove one or more values from a given path in Windows Registry.
  • New-TemporaryFileName: Generates a string to use as your temporary file's name.
  • New-TemporaryFolderName: Generates a string to use as your temporary folder's name.
• Template.psm1: A simple template for creating .psm1 files. It enables the strict mode, separates the public functions from private functions, and exposes the public functions.