Last Windows Update Information

We use the com object Microsoft.Update.Session to get the update results.

Below one liner will tell us the previous update search and the last update installation date.

(New-Object -com "Microsoft.Update.AutoUpdate").Results

Output:

LastSearchSuccessDate LastInstallationSuccessDate
--------------------- --------------------------- 
 6/17/2021 3:54:31 AM  6/16/2021 3:57:34 AM

New Windows Update Count

Furthermore, to get the number of updates which are yet to be installed.

$UpdateSession = New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.Session
$UpdateSearcher = $UpdateSession.CreateupdateSearcher()
$Updates = @($UpdateSearcher.Search("IsInstalled=0").Updates)

#This will give the number of updates yet to install.
$Updates.Title.count 

Pending Operating System Restart

Any pending restart because of previous update can be identified through the registry “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update\RebootRequired”

The entry will have a value “true” if the operating system is waiting for a restart which is needed to complete an update.

Windows Update Status

Above codes can be combined to get following information about a computer.

1. LastSearchSuccessDate
2. LastInstallationSuccessDate
3. NewUpdateCount
4. PendingReboot

We can now wrap the script with invoke-command to remote execute in multiple systems

function Get-WindowsUpdateInformation()
 {
     param
     (
         [Parameter()]
         [string[]]
         $ComputerName="localhost"
     )


     $Results = Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock  {     
         $result = (New-Object -com "Microsoft.Update.AutoUpdate").Results     
         $UpdateSession = New-Object -ComObject Microsoft.Update.Session     
         $UpdateSearcher = $UpdateSession.CreateupdateSearcher()     
         $Updates = @($UpdateSearcher.Search("IsInstalled=0").Updates)     
         $PendingReboot = $false     
    
         #Checking pending reboot
         if (Get-Item "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update\RebootRequired" -EA Ignore) { $PendingReboot=$true }     
   
         #Framing the result to a list
         New-Object psobject -Property @{         
              LastSearchSuccessDate = $result.LastSearchSuccessDate         
              LastInstallationSuccessDate = $result.LastInstallationSuccessDate         
              NewUpdateCount = $Updates.Title.count         
              PendingReboot = $PendingReboot     
         } 
     } -ComputerName $ComputerName 

     $Results | Select-Object @{Name="ServerName"; Expression={$_.PSComputerName}}, LastSearchSuccessDate, LastInstallationSuccessDate, NewUpdateCount, PendingReboot
 }
 

Multiple server/computer names can be passed as an array to get the update information, or the server name can also be read from a text file and passed as parameter.

Get-WindowsUpdateInformation -ComputerName testhost1, testhost2

Output:

ServerName LastSearchSuccessDate LastInstallationSuccessDate NewUpdateCount PendingReboot
---------- --------------------- --------------------------- -------------- -------------
 testhost1  6/17/2021 5:31:12 PM  5/16/2021 2:56:21 PM                     1         False
 testhost2  6/16/2021 6:33:22 PM  5/21/2021 4:22:34 AM                     1         False

If you have some better ideas or know other ways of doing this, please comment it. It will be informative for me and for the readers.

Hope you liked this article and thank you for reading

We can leverage the pnputil.exe tool to perform the installation fast and easy.

Consider a scenario of a multiple drivers packed to an iso image. Below script will install all the required drivers.

# Mount the driver iso image
Mount-DiskImage D:\Driver\drivers-windows.iso

# Get the mount point/drive letter, considering that the above one is the only disk mounted
$isoMount = (Get-DiskImage -DevicePath \\.\CDROM0  | Get-Volume).DriveLetter

# Find the inf files and install
Get-ChildItem "$($isoMount):\" -Recurse -Include *.inf | ForEach-Object {
     $_.FullName
     pnputil /add-driver $_.FullName /install 
}

Running the script would update all the drivers which are meant for your system hardware.

Hope you like this article and thank you for reading.

Recently, I was assigned with a printer server migration project from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2016.

The difficult thing was that, I couldn’t find any article which explains about the migration from 32-bit architecture to 64-bit architecture. May be I am not that good in googling.

My task was to migrate 100+ printers from windows server 2003 to windows server 2016 with all configurations.

First thought which came to my mind was to export all printers settings (Printer name, driver name, model, printer port name, printer port IP, printer share name etc.) to a text file using the inbuilt vb scripts in windows and then format it to a CSV file.
With the CSV file as source, PowerShell can be used to add printers to the new server using Add-PrinterPort and Add-Printer command-lets. I was able to migrate the printers to new server with the Name, share name, port, comments, location etc. But I was stuck at paper size. I was not able to set custom size(Height and Width) for the label printers.

Here the only change was – the driver name was different for existing printers in windows server 2003 and the new package for windows server 2016. So I had to change the printer driver name in PowerShell accordingly

After some thought process, I thought of printer migration tools. But there was some difficulty, it was for backup and restore of printers within windows server 2003.
Then I tried with Print Management tool in windows 2016, connected the print management mmc to windows server 2003, exported the printer’s and … import failed.

Then I used PrintBrm.exe to export the printer’s and import failed again. 🙁

The issue was with the driver “name” as mentioned above.

• Windows 2003 : Driver name – Zebra GK420t
• Windows 2016 : Driver name – ZDesigner GK420t

Below are the steps which I followed to migrate the printers from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2016

Step-1

Add new driver to windows server 2003

Added the latest driver to windows 2003 to match the driver name. In the list of printer drivers, the new name was available.

Step-2

Change existing printer driver to newly installed driver

For ease of login, both old and new servers local administrator id and password is set to same.
From windows server 2016, Following PowerShell script was run to change the drivers in Windows 2003.

$Windows2003Name = "PRNSVR2003"
#Fetch all printers having driver name starting with Z, i.e. Zebra
$printers = Get-printer -ComputerName $Windows2003Name | where {$_.DriverName -like "Z*"} 
foreach($prns in $printers) 
{	#iterating through each printer and changing the driver name to new drivers
   if($prns.DriverName -like "Zebra  GK420t*")
   {
        #$prns.Name
        Set-Printer -ComputerName $Windows2003Name -Name $prns.Name -DriverName "ZDesigner GK420t"
   }
   elseif($prns.DriverName -like "Zebra  TLP2844-Z*")
   {
        #$prns.Name
        Set-Printer -ComputerName $Windows2003Name -Name $prns.Name -DriverName "ZDesigner TLP 2844-Z"
   }
}

While the script is running, we can see the driver getting changed in the windows 2003 server printer console

Step-3

Backup printers from old server

From Windows 2016, run printer migration tool – PrintBrm.exe
Open command prompt and run the following

cd %WinDir%\System32\Spool\Tools
printbrm.exe -s \\PRNSVR2003 -b -f Win2003Printer.printerExport

Step-4

Restore printers to new server

Double click the above created file to import the printers with all settings.

That’s it! All your printers are in the new server.

Thank you for reading my post. Hope it is helpful to you.

The difficult job is to find which folder has used more space. Out in the market, there are many tools for analyzing the disk space utilization. The one which I like is TreeSize.

Did you know that few lines of PowerShell script could do the same?

Detailed script with exception handling

$path = "C:\Users\" 
$depth = 1 
$result = @() 

$folders = (Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Directory -Recurse -Depth $depth).FullName 
$folders | % {     
    try {         
        $size = Get-ChildItem -Path $_ -File -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | measure-object  -property length -Sum | select @{Name="Sum"; Expression={[Math]::Round($($_.Sum/1gb), 2)}}         
        if($size -eq $null) {             
            $result += $_ | Select-object @{Name="Path";Expression={$_}}, @{Name="Size(gb)";Expression={0}}         
            }         
        else {             
            $result += $_ | Select-object @{Name="Path";Expression={$_}}, @{Name="Size(gb)";Expression={$Size.Sum}}         
            }     
        }     
        catch [System.Exception] {         
            "Access Denied to - " + $_     
            } 
        } 
#condition to filter -- below sample shows folder occupying 1GB+ data
$result | Where {$_."Size(gb)" -gt 1} | Sort-Object "Size(gb)" -Descending

Hope this helps you…