CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershellactive-directorypowershell-4.0
paulorv
paulorv

Reputation: 17

PowerShell - iterating over computer names in Active Directory

I'm new to PowerShell and I'm attempting to write a script that will query AD for machine names, check which ones are responding and write the output into a file. So far I have this:

$computers = Get-ADComputer -filter {(Name -like "PC*")} | Select-Object -Property Name
foreach ($computer in $computers) {
    if((Test-Connection -Cn $computer -BufferSize 16 -Count 1 -Ea 0 -Quiet)) {
        "Machine $computer connected." | Out-File "out.txt" -Append
    } else {
        "Machine $computer not connected." | Out-File "out.txt" -Append
    } #end if
} #end foreach

What I get in the output text file looks like the following:

...
Machine @{Name=PC-0649} not connected.
Machine @{Name=PC-1541} not connected.
Machine @{Name=PC-1574} not connected.
...

I think my problem lies with the Select-Object -Property Name part of the first line. Running the debugger, it looks like PowerShell is formatting each iteration of $computer to include the header line.

[DBG]: PS Y:\>> $computer

Name                                                                                                                                                                                          
----                                                                                                                                                                                          
PC-0649

What's the best way for me to strip out everything except the PC-#### part in this situation?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 5318

Answers (1)

Ben Thul
Ben Thul

Reputation: 32697

I think your problem is that you still have a list of (truncated) computer objects in $computers. Verify this by doing $computers[0].GetType(). If you don't see String, it's not a string. :) Try this instead:

$computers = Get-ADComputer -filter {(Name -like "PC*")} | 
   Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name

Upvotes: 1

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