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PowerShell - Yet another Sysinternals download script

Sun, 01 Dec 2013 22:10:33 +0000

Today I completed the Microsoft Virtual Academy Advanced Tools & Scripting with PowerShell 3.0 Jump Start course. If you haven’t looked at it yet, I realy recommend you do so, lots of good stuff there. So for the purpose of applying some of the stuff I’ve learned there regarding the use of -Whatif and -verbose messages i wrote the below script which downloads the sysinternals tools.

<#
.Synopsis
 Download Sysinternals Tools
.DESCRIPTION
 Download the Sysinternals tools from live.sysinternals.com to the local machine
.NOTES
 version 1.0
.EXAMPLE
 Get-Sysinternals -Path C:\Data|sysinternals
.EXAMPLE
 Get-Sysinternals.ps1 -Path C:\Data\Sysinternals -Whatif -verbose
#>

[CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess=$true)]
Param(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true,ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true,ParameterSetName="Directory",
 HelpMessage= 'The local download folder')]
[String]$Directory
)

Begin
 {
 Write-Verbose "Starting Sysinternals Tool download"
 $url="http://live.sysinternals.com/tools/"

 if ((Test-path -path $Directory) -eq $False)
 {
 Write-Verbose "Creating Directory $Directory"
 if ($PScmdlet.ShouldProcess("Creating folder $Directory","",""))
 {New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $Directory}
 } 

 $siuri = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $url -EA SilentlyContinue
 if ($siuri.BaseResponse.StatusCode -eq "OK")
 {
 $sfiles = $siuri.Links | Where-Object {$_.href -ne '/'} | Select-Object -ExpandProperty innerText
 }
 Else
 {
 Write-Verbose "Unable to reach $url"
 Exit 1
 } 
 }

Process
 {
 ForEach ($st in $sfiles)
 {
 $downloadfile = $url+$st
 #Write-Verbose -Message "Downloading $downloadfile to $Directory\$st"
 if ($PScmdlet.ShouldProcess("Downloading now $downloadfile to $Directory\$st","",""))
 {Start-BitsTransfer -Description "SysinternalsDownload - $st" -Source $downloadfile -Destination "$Directory\$st"}
 }
 }

End
 {
 Write-Verbose "Download complete"
 }

ToolTip: Microsoft Download Manager

Wed, 23 May 2012 17:07:40 +0000

If you’re looking for a simple to use Download Manager, have a look at the Microsoft Download Manager. It does not have that many specialized features as many other download managers out there, but it’s a nice FREE and simple to use tool. You must install the software, but it only uses about 1.3 MB.

The Microsoft Download Manager can be downloaded from here

Tip: Download more than 2 files at once (Internet Explorer)

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:19:19 +0000

I had thought that by now this is something everybody knows, but unfortunately that is not the case, so that is why I post this one today.

By default, Windows Internet Explorer 7 and earlier versions limit the number of files that you can download at one time to two. Windows Internet Explorer 8 limits the number of files that you can download at one time to six. More details here

Verifying your file downloads

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:40:59 +0000

Today we once more ran into an issue caused by a corrupted file transfer. I mention “once more” because this is something I see happening all the time. So let me drop a couple of words on this.

When putting content on an FTP site consider creating a checksum file as this will allow others to validate their file downloads. Just comparing file size is not enough (examples follow).

There are many freeware tools that can create and verify checksum files. One of the tools we are using is QuickSFV. What is nice about QuickSFV is that it is fast and can be fully integrated into the Windows Explorer context menu, allowing you to just select a file and create or verify a checksum file of it.

Font Collection

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:31:33 +0000

Yesterday evening I was helping out my wife with creating some invitation cards for a children event that takes place during spring vacation. For the juniors there was a picture on the front side of the invitation that was okay, but we both decided that for the teen-agers we must use a different theme.

Finding the right picture wasn’t easy, so we decided to just write text, but to use a cool font. Although Office 2007 already comes with a large number of fonts, we were just looking for something different.