PowerShell Pro

Advanced PowerShell operations for system automation, process management, WMI queries, and REST API calls — all without leaving the terminal.

When to Use

• User asks to list, start, or stop a Windows process or service
• User wants to query system info via WMI (CPU, RAM, disk, motherboard)
• User needs to call a REST API from the command line
• User wants to automate a task or write a reusable script
• User asks about scheduled tasks, environment variables, or system events

How to Use

List running processes (sorted by CPU)

powershell
Get-Process | Sort-Object CPU -Descending | Select-Object -First 15 Name, Id, CPU, WorkingSet

Kill a process by name

powershell
Stop-Process -Name "notepad" -Force

Query system info via WMI

powershell
# CPU info
Get-WmiObject Win32_Processor | Select-Object Name, NumberOfCores, MaxClockSpeed

# RAM total
(Get-WmiObject Win32_ComputerSystem).TotalPhysicalMemory / 1GB

# Disk drives
Get-WmiObject Win32_DiskDrive | Select-Object Model, Size, MediaType

REST API call with Invoke-RestMethod

powershell
$response = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://api.example.com/data" `
  -Method GET `
  -Headers @{ "Authorization" = "Bearer $env:API_TOKEN" }
$response | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 5

List scheduled tasks

powershell
Get-ScheduledTask | Where-Object State -ne 'Disabled' |
  Select-Object TaskName, TaskPath, State |
  Sort-Object TaskName

Read Windows Event Log (last 20 errors)

powershell
Get-EventLog -LogName System -EntryType Error -Newest 20 |
  Select-Object TimeGenerated, Source, Message

Export output to CSV

powershell
Get-Process | Select-Object Name, Id, CPU, WorkingSet |
  Export-Csv -Path "$env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\processes.csv" -NoTypeInformation

Examples

"Show me what's eating memory right now" → Get-Process | Sort-Object WorkingSet -Descending | Select-Object -First 10 Name, Id, @{N='MB';E={[math]::Round($_.WorkingSet/1MB,1)}}

"Call the GitHub API and get my rate limit status" → Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://api.github.com/rate_limit" -Headers @{Authorization="Bearer $env:GITHUB_TOKEN"}

"List all scheduled tasks that run on startup" → Get-ScheduledTask | Where-Object { $_.Triggers | Where-Object CimClass -match 'BootTrigger' }

Cautions

• Stop-Process -Force kills without saving — confirm with user before running on critical processes
• WMI queries can be slow on first run; subsequent calls are faster
• Invoke-RestMethod requires -UseBasicParsing on older PowerShell versions
• Environment variables set in a script session don't persist to the OS — use [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable() for persistence