PowerShell - Get/Set the Network Level Authentication Remotely (RDP Setting)

A few days ago I was in a training class out of the office with one of my work colleague. During the class he tried to connect to work using our Citrix (SRA) portal when he realized that his computer at work (freshly re-installed with Windows 8.1) was not allowing him to connect because of the Network Level Authentication.

Error message: "The remote computer that you are trying to connect to requires Network Level Authentication (NLA), but your Windows domain controller cannot be contacted to perform NLA. If you are an administrator on the remote computer, you can disable NLA by using the options on the Remote tab of the System Properties dialog box."

Before I talk about the workaround and the PowerShell script we used to fix that, let's investigate in order to understand the problem.

PowerShell SCCM 2007 Module - My contribution

I recently contributed to a PowerShell module called SCCM Automation created by Andre Bocchini. (SCCM stands for System Center Configuration Manager)

Take a look at it on GitHub here: https://github.com/andrebocchini/sccm-powershell-automation-module Andre really did an awesome job on this module!

This Module for SCCM 2007 (which does not come with a set of PowerShell Cmdlets) allows you to query Computers, Collections, Advertisements etc... (Check the Full list of Cmdlets)

However against big SCCM environment I notice some functions queries were very slow to report object.
After inspecting the code, I tweaked some parts of the code, especially on the Get-WmiObject queries.
Those modifications are now part of the module.

Scripting Games 2013 - Advanced Event 2 - An Inventory Intervention

Now that event 2 is closed for new entries. Here is the solution I proposed.

Instruction 
Download the instruction here [skydrive]

Dr. Scripto finally has the budget to buy a few new virtualization host servers, but he needs to make some room in the data center to accommodate them. He thinks it makes sense to get rid of his lowest-powered old servers first… but he needs to figure out which ones those are.
This is just the first wave, too – there’s more budget on the horizon so it’s possible he’ll need to run this little report a few times. Better make a reusable tool.

All of the virtualization hosts run Windows Server, but some of them don’t have Windows PowerShell installed, and they’re all running different OS versions. The oldest OS version is Windows 2000 Server (he knows, and he’s embarrassed  but he’s just been so darn busy). The good news is that they all belong to the same domain, and that you can rely on having a Domain Admin account to work with.

The good Doctor has asked you to write a PowerShell tool that can show him each server’s name, installed version of Windows, amount of installed physical memory, and number of installed processors. 
For processors, he’ll be happy getting a count of cores, or sockets, or even both – whatever you can reliably provide across all these different versions of Windows. He has a few text files with computer names – he’d like to pipe the computer names, as strings, to you tool, and have your tool query those computers.

Key Points

• Some Remote Server don't have PowerShell
• Different OS versions (oldest is Window Server 2000)
• Domain Environment, Domain Admin credential.
• Output of the script: ServerName, Version of Windows, Amount of Physical Memory, Processors Count, Sockets Count, Cores Count.
• Script can receive ComputerName injected via the pipeline

Powershell - Launch/Start a process on a remote machine without powershell installed on it

How to launch/start a process on a remote machine when this one does not have Powershell ? ... WMI!

Solution 1 (Ravikanth Chaganti, see his WMI book! Must read!)

$proc = Invoke-WmiMethod `
        -ComputerName Test `
        -Class Win32_Process `
        -Name Create `
        -ArgumentList "Notepad.exe"
Register-WmiEvent `
    -ComputerName test `
    -Query "Select * from Win32_ProcessStopTrace Where ProcessID=$($proc.ProcessId)" `
    -Action { Write-Host "Process ExitCode: $($event.SourceEventArgs.NewEvent.ExitStatus)" }

Solution 2 (The Lonely Administrator)

Function New-RemoteProcess {