User Powershell Script as Startup or Login Script and Bypass Execution Policy

Use the following settings in the Login/Startup Script section of your GPO

Script Name: %windir%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe
Script Parameters: -Noninteractive -ExecutionPolicy Bypass –Noprofile -file MyPSScript.ps1 -psscriptparameter1 value -pssscriptparameter2

-Noninteractive Prevents an interactive window from trying to open at any time during the script execution

-ExecutionPolicy Bypass Enables this single script to run if more restrictive Powershell Execution policies are normally applied on the target computer

-Noprofile Ensures PowerShell does not execute profile scripts and instead launches the desired script immediately in an unaltered environment

References:

http://woshub.com/running-powershell-startup-scripts-using-gpo/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/Microsoft.PowerShell.Core/About/about_PowerShell_exe?view=powershell-5.1#-file----filepath-args

Remove Server Manager and PowerShell from Taskbar on RDS

Best article on this is at

http://www.emware.nl/articles/remove-server-manager-and-powershell-icons-from-taskbar.html

The only thing I would add is to also include the following files

%AllUsersProfile%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Accessories\Windows PowerShell\Windows PowerShell (x86).lnk

%AllUsersProfile%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools\Windows PowerShell (x86).lnk

%AllUsersProfile%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Windows System\Windows PowerShell.lnk

%AllUsersProfile%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\System Tools\Windows PowerShell.lnk

References:

http://www.emware.nl/articles/remove-server-manager-and-powershell-icons-from-taskbar.html

Installing Exchange 2010 SP3 on Windows 2012 (NOT R2)

There are plenty of easily found documents on how to do this, so I'm not going to repeat the instructions here. However, I ran into an issue that none of those articles mentioned, the details of which are below.

I had installed all of the various Exchange 2010 SP3 prerequisites on Windows Server 2012 and followed all of the articles exactly, but whenever I ran setup.exe (GUI) or setup.com (CLI) to install Exchange, I got the an error containing the following phrase:

Could not load file or assembly 'System.Management.Automation' or one of its dependencies.

If you encounter the error message, you simply need to use Server Management Console to install the Windows PowerShell 2.0 Engine feature.



References:
Standard install instructions for Exchange 2010 on Windows 2012 (NOT R2)
http://oxfordsbsguy.com/2013/03/24/how-to-install-exchange-2010-sp3-on-windows-server-2012/

Installing the Windows PowerShell 2.0 Engine
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh849675.aspx

The forum discussions that gave me a clue as to the PowerShell version issue
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15473734/could-not-load-file-or-assembly-system-management-automation

Get Exchange Mailbox Stats

Get-MailboxStatistics

Get-MailboxStatistics | ft DisplayName,TotalItemSize,ItemCount

Get-MailboxStatistics | Sort-Object TotalItemSize –Descending | ft DisplayName,TotalItemSize,ItemCount

References:
http://www.msexchange.org/articles-tutorials/exchange-server-2007/management-administration/getting-mailbox-statistics-exchange-2007.html

Find Old Computers in AD

For Windows 2003/2008
(Must be 2003 Native domain or newer)
In a Command Prompt window type:

dsquery computer -inactive <num>

Where <num> is the minimum number of weeks the device has been inactive for. Advice seems to be to use at least 2, as anything less than that is not fully reliable.

For Windows 2008 R2+
In a PowerShell  window type:

$time=Read-host "Enter a date in format mm/dd/yyyy"

then

Get-ADComputer -Filter * | Get-ADObject -Properties lastlogontimestamp | where {(([DateTime]::FromFileTime($_.lastlogontimestamp) - ([system.datetime]$time)).totaldays) -lt 0 } | select name

You can change what you include in the select command at the end to get more or different info.

If you want to then remove all resulting computer accounts use the following command:

Remove-ADObject -recursive

in place of the select name

That is, to remove all computers older than $time use the following command:

Get-ADComputer -Filter * | Get-ADObject -Properties lastlogontimestamp | where {(([DateTime]::FromFileTime($_.lastlogontimestamp) - ([system.datetime]$time)).totaldays) -lt 0 } | Remove-ADObject -recursive

For more detail or a better example (of which this is basically a cut and paste at the moment), see reference site below.

References:
http://blog.mattvogt.net/powershell-last-logon-timestamp-for-single-ho 

Find the Desktop

It can be REALLY hard to access the desktop using scripts, especially batch scripts, if it has been moved from the default location of C:\Users\%username%, or even worse if it has been moved out of the %userprofile% location by the way of Folder Redirection.

As batch files cannot find this location, and I do not want to start learning VB script, I want a Powershell method I can use to find it.

This is the method I found:

$desktop = [Environment]::GetFolderPath("Desktop")

The $desktop variable now contains the location to the currently logged-in user's desktop. To view this path simply type

write-host $desktop

Happy day!

Reference:
The comment on the post at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11349885/get-currently-logged-in-users-with-powershell-to-add-shortcut-to-desktop

:-)