Thursday 28 November 2013

GIP the best PowerShell alias

I recently discovered the PowerShell alias GIP which runs the Get-NetIPConfiguration cmdlet.
This is the new ipconfig for PowerShell.
Here is the example for the straight gip command.



Here is gip with the -detailed option shortened to -det.


Isn't that great!
It might not be THE BEST PowerShell alias, but it is up there.   I think GCM would take that crown.

[Update] I just did a search and found a TechNet blog article about GIP and also TNC. TNC is an alias for Test-NetConnection and looks like a great alias also.   Read the article New Networking Diagnostics.


Thursday 14 November 2013

Remove SkyDrive and Homegroup from Windows 8.1 File Explorer

Today I got sick of scrolling past SkyDrive and Homegroup nodes in the left pane of File Explorer in Windows 8.1.   I did a search and found a good post on Lifehacker and another post from a forum on how to remove them from the Explorer window.

Removing SkyDrive

I am adding the details here for my own reference but here is the link to the article from Lifehacker titled How to Get Rid of SkyDrive in Windows 8.1 Explorer.

The root of the change is to set a registry key called Attributes to a value of 0.   There is one problem though. The parent key called ShellFolder does not give read/write permissions to user accounts.   You will need to take ownership of the ShellFolder key and give your user account read/write permissions to change the Attributes value.

The key of interest is
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{8E74D236-7F35-4720-B138-1FED0B85EA75}\ShellFolder



Removing Homegroup

This one is a little easier.   Make sure you are not a member of any Homegroups and then disable two Homegroup related services in the services.msc utility.

The services are;

  • Homegroup Listener
  • Homegroup Provider

After you have made the above changes simply reboot the machine and the explorer windows will look like this;


Ah, that's better. No SkyDrive or Homegroup tree nodes.