Top 20 Windows PowerShell Commands for Administrators

Windows PowerShell is a command-line shell of a Windows system. It helps in the automation of tasks and processes of the different operating systems such as Linux, Windows, and macOS.

To open a PowerShell, just search PowerShell on Windows, right-click, and click on the run as administrator. Here, we will list out the top 20 PowerShell commands that help you understand and use commands more.

(1) Get-Help command helps the user identify the usage of cmdlets, functions, scripts, and modules. In simple terms, you can extract all information and usage of commands by using this cmdlets.

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-Help

Usage Examples:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-Help <command>

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-Help <command> -Example

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-Help <command> -Full

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-Help *

(2) To update help content of PowerShell

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Update-Help

(3) Get-Command displays all commands available in PowerShell. In below example, command use with wildcard * to display commands with suffix Service.

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-Command *-Service

(4) Get-Help command use to understand the usage of commands 

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-Help New-Service

(5) Get-Service command used to display the running and stopped services of the computer. It may be used with wildcards to filter content specific to the search element.

In addition, the Get-Member command displays the members, the properties and methods, of objects.

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-Service | Get-Member

(6) To clear the screen or window of PowerShell. You may alternately use alias cls or clear.

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Clear-Host

(7) Get-Alias command helps to find the exact name of PowerShell command.

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-Alias history

Some commands of cmd and Linux which may use in PowerShell also.

1) cat  2) dir  3) mount  4) rm  5) cd   6) echo  7) move  8) rmdir
9) chdir  10) erase  11) popd  12) sleep  13) clear  14) h   15) ps
16) sort  17) cls  18) history  19) copy  20) kill  21) pwd  22) type
23) del  24) lp  25) r  26) write 27) diff  28) ls

(8) To create user given alias to specific command

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Set-Alias -Name hj -Value Get-Location

(9) Create a variable to access the commands

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $loc = Get-Location
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $loc

(10) Comparison operators ( eq (equals), ne (not equals), gt (greater than), ge (greater than or equals to), lt (less than), le (less than or equals to))

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $A = 1

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $B = 8

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $A -eq $B

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $A -ne $B

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $A -gt $B

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $A -ge $B

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $A -lt $B

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $A -le $B

(13) Logical operators (-AND (logical and), -OR (logical or), -NOT (logical not)) used to perform boolean expression.

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $A -AND $B

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $A -OR $B

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> -NOT($A -AND $B)

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> -NOT($A -OR $B)

(14) Arithmetic operators ( + (addition), - (subtraction), * (multiplication), / (division), % (modulus)) to perform mathematical operations.

(15) To store results in text file by using > operator

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> dir > test.log

(16) Get-ChildItem command displays all directories and sub-directories

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-ChildItem

Below command list out directories up to depth 2

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-ChildItem -Path C:\Windows -Depth 2

(17) Get-Process command used to list out processes on a local computer.

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-Process

(18) Restart-Service command used to stop and again start the service on a computer.

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Restart-Service -Name Themes

(19) Remove-Item command used to delete all files within a directory without being prompted for each deletion.

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Remove-Item C:\test –Recurse

(20) To display the top 20 updated processes list sort by CPU by using while loop functionality 

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> while (1) { ps | sort -desc cpu | select -first 20; sleep -seconds 10; cls }