Common Helpdesk PowerShell Commands

Last updated Nov 14, 2023

• Powershell
• Tools
• Utilities
• Helpdesk
• Terminal tip tuesday

Here is a small collection of PowerShell commands that might be helpful to any user administrators or helpdesk or service delivery technicians.

These commands are related to interacting with workstations and servers.

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(Get-CimInstance -Class Win32_BIOS).SerialNumber

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Rename-Computer -NewName YourNewName -Restart -Force

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Add-Computer -Credential (Get-Credential) -DomainName YourDomain.com -Restart -Force

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Restart-Computer -Force

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Clear-RecycleBin -DriveLetter C -Force

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Get-ComputerInfo

You can also select specific computer information, such as uptime, by specifying that property in the -Properties parameter:

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Get-ComputerInfo -Property OsUptime

List all services:

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Get-Service | Format-Table -AutoSize

Get details of a specific service:

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Get-Service -Name NameOfService | Select-Object * | Format-Table -AutoSize

Force a group policy client update (this must be run from somewhere where the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) are installed):

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Invoke-GPUpdate -ComputerName workstation01 -Force

This is the same as using gpupdate /force in Command Prompt.

Get the resulting applied group policies of the workstation/user:

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Get-GPResultantSetOfPolicy -Computer workstation01 -User username -ReportType Html -Path "C:\temp\gpresult.html)"

This is the same as using gpresult /h C:\temp\gpresult.html in Command Prompt.

To check if the workstation’s trust with the domain has failed, use:

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Test-ComputerSecureChannel

If everything is okay, this should return True. If it returns False, then the workstation has lost its trust relationship with the domain. You can attempt to resolve this by using:

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Test-ComputerSecureChannel -Repair

I recommend resetting the computer account in Active Directory before performing this step.

As you can imagine, it can be helpful to run a command on a remote computer, whether it is to restart that computer, get it’s information, etc.

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Invoke-Command -ComputerName server01 -ScriptBlock {your_command_goes_here}

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Get-LocalUser

These commands are related to interacting with users.

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Unlock-ADAccount -Identity UserName

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Set-ADAccountPassword UserName -NewPassword (Read-Host "Enter the new password" -AsSecureString) –Reset

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Add-ADGroupMember -Identity GroupName -Members UserName

These commands are related to networking on a computer.

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Get-NetAdapter | Format-Table -AutoSize

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Get-NetIPAddress | Format-Table -AutoSize

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Clear-DnsClientCache

This is the same as doing ipconfig /flushdns in Command Prompt.

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Set-DnsClient -InterfaceAlias YourInterfaceAlias -ConnectionSpecificSuffix YourDomain.com

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Set-DnsClient -InterfaceIndex -ServerAddresses ("dns1.yourdomain.com","dns2.yourdomain.com")

Check out Better than Just Pinging as well.

Check out Administer Windows Core Print Servers, as the commands described there are relevant in general.

For most commands, you can take the output and copy it to your clipboard using Set-Clipboard. As an example, let’s get the computer information and copy it:

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Get-ComputerInfo | Out-String | Set-Clipboard

Get what is stored in your clipboard:

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Get-Clipboard

There are so many helpful commands, as PowerShell is a powerful method of Windows administration. I hope some of these are helpful to someone! As always, you should fully understand what a command or script does before running it in your environment. Taking the time to learn how to use the terminal to administer your users and workstations will, over time, save you quite a bit of time.