In this how-to guide, I'll outline the basic PowerShell cmdlets I believe everyone should know. If you're a beginner, these commands will be new to you. If you're a tech-savvy user, you may learn ...

Luckily, most of the features in Table 2.1 are native to the cmd command prompt, which makes PowerShell adoption easier for administrators already familiar with the Windows command line.

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.

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.