Richard Siddaway's Blog

A forum question regarding retrieving WMI based data from multiple servers and displaying it as HTML was interesting.  I would approach it like this

$servers = Get-Content -Path C:\scripts\servers.txt            
$data = @()            
foreach ($server in $servers){            
 $compdata = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property @{            
  Computer = $server            
  Contactable = $false            
  LastBootTime = ""            
  AllowTSConnections = $false            
 }            
            
 if (Test-Connection -ComputerName $server -Quiet -Count 1){            
   $compdata.Contactable = $true            
               
   $os = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem -ComputerName $server            
   $compdata.LastBootTime = $os.ConvertToDateTime($os.LastBootUpTime)            
            
   $ts = Get-WmiObject -Namespace root\cimv2\terminalservices -Class Win32_TerminalServiceSetting -ComputerName $server -Authentication PacketPrivacy            
   if ($ts.AllowTSConnections -eq 1){            
    $compdata.AllowTSConnections = $true            
   }            
 }            
             
 $data += $compdata            
}            
$data            
$data | ConvertTo-Html | Out-File -FilePath c:\scripts\report.html            
Invoke-Item -Path c:\scripts\report.html

Put the list of servers in a text file & read it in via get-content.

use foreach to iterate over the list of servers.

For each server create an object and then test if you can ping the server. Note that the default setting for Contactable is $false so don’t need to deal with that case.

Get the WMI data and set the properties on the object.

Add the object to an array

After you’ve hit all the servers use ConvertTo-Html and write to a file with out-file.

use Invoke-Item to view the report

A question brought it home to me that WMI property names don’t always mean what you might think they mean – this is also true of other objects but I tripped over this one with WMI so we’ll stick with that.

PS> Get-CimInstance -ClassName Win32_Desktop -Filter "Name LIKE '%Richard'" |
>> Format-List ScreenSaver*
>>

ScreenSaverActive     : True
ScreenSaverExecutable : C:\Windows\system32\PhotoScreensaver.scr
ScreenSaverSecure     : True
ScreenSaverTimeout    : 600

The ScreenSaverActive property doesn’t mean that the screen saver is currently active – it means that one has been set!   This is doubly confusing because the documentation states

I recently (1 June) showed how to discover the user profiles on your system. Now its time to delete them.

function remove-profile {            
 param (            
  [parameter(Mandatory=$true)]            
  [string]$username            
 )            
            
 $user = Get-CimInstance -Class Win32_UserAccount -Filter "Name = '$username'"             
 $profile = Get-CimInstance -Class Win32_UserProfile -Filter "SID = '$($user.SID)'"            
 $folder = Split-Path -Path $profile.LocalPath -Leaf            
            
 if ($folder -eq $username){            
  Remove-CimInstance -InputObject $profile            
 }            
 else {            
  Write-Warning -Message "Could not resolve profile and user name"             
 }            
            
}

I’m going to start with the CIM cmdlets as these are the way of the future in PowerShell v3.

Start by taking a user name as a parameter. Get the Win32_UserAccount class object representing that account. use the SID to find the profile via Win32_UserProfile.  Take the profile’s localpath and split it. The last part of the path should match the username – if it does then delete the profile otherwise throw a warning. Deleting the profile does delete the folder under c:\users

If you have to use the WMI cmdlets then its very similar

function remove-profile {            
 param (            
  [parameter(Mandatory=$true)]            
  [string]$username            
 )            
            
 $user = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_UserAccount -Filter "Name = '$username'"             
 $profile = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_UserProfile -Filter "SID = '$($user.SID)'"            
 $folder = Split-Path -Path $profile.LocalPath -Leaf            
            
 if ($folder -eq $username){            
  Remove-WmiObject -InputObject $profile            
 }            
 else {            
  Write-Warning -Message "Could not resolve profile and user name"             
 }            
            
}

Just the name of the cmdlets change.

You can’t use WMI to delete local accounts as explained on page 363 of PowerShell and WMI 

If you have profiles generated by AD accounts you’ll need to find the SID from the AD account and use that as the filter for deletion