PowerShell is a cross-platform command-line interface, but it's only a great tool if you know what commands to run. In this guide, I will outline the top 15 cmdlets that everyone should use to ...

Get-Basics PowerShell uses a consistent syntax for all of its commands — in fact, PowerShell commands are actually called cmdlets, because they’re much more than simple DOS-style actions.

A script is a collection of those commands in a .ps1 file. A .ps1 file contains a script executed by PowerShell, such as the basic Get-Help command.

Don't just stick with the commands that Microsoft provides -- extend the commands in PowerShell.

This course has three hours of content covering everything from basic PowerShell commands to managing users and groups within Active Directory.

Figure 2. PowerShell can display basic operating system information. Incidentally, the Get-CimInstance cmdlet can display far more operating system information than what we are using here.

Windows PowerShell has become an essential command-line tool for system administrators and advanced users.