Prevent Screensavers and Lock-screens with Powershell

There might be a number of reasons to want to prevent your windows screensavers and lock-screens from engaging and in some cases (no doubt yours if you have hit this article from a search engine) local policy on the machine preventing you from changing these settings. Powershell lets us work around this problem and prevent the machine from locking or activating a screensaver. Prevent Screensavers and Lock-screens The bulk of the code below has been lifted from this great write up: https://dmitrysotnikov.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/prevent-desktop-lock-or-screensaver-with-powershell/ I just took things one step further by adding an infinite loop. My version of this code will run indefinitely. ...

March 26, 2020 · 2 min · Tom

Getting started with Python 3 - a beginner's cheat sheet

Python.Org I have been getting started with python 3 – I want to make this my primary scripting language. One way I like to assist myself whilst I learn the rope is to maintain a crib sheet filled with all the trivial things I would otherwise forget. Python 3 Cheat Sheet #Define Variables programming_languages: "Python", "VB", "C++", "C#" #Print Variables print(programming_languages) print('--------------------') #Basic for loop + variables for language in programming_languages: print(language) print('--------------------') #Basic Function def FuncExample(): i: 1 for language in programming_languages: #Concatinate Strings and Integers in print statements print("Language " + str(i) + ":" + language) #Increment Integer i += 1 FuncExample() print('--------------------') #Functions with Variables #1 - Strings def FuncVarExample1(fname, lname): #Print with CRLF print("First Name: " + fname + "\r\n" + "Last Name: " + lname) FuncVarExample1("Joe","Bloggs") print('--------------------') #Functions with Variables #2 - Integers + Returning Values def FuncVarExample2(x, y): #Basic integer maths return x+y #Concatenating Strings and Integers print("33 + 42: " + str(FuncVarExample2(33,42))) print('--------------------') You can also find more code snippets here: https://exitcode0.net/code-samples/ ...

November 23, 2019 · 1 min · Tom

Powershell - Checking the Language Mode

For security purposes, it is possible to control the language mode in a given Powershell session. These language modes can constrict which modules can be loaded during the life of a powershell session. Learn mode about Powershell langeuage modes: About Language Modes – Microsoft Detect the Current Language Mode $sLangMode: $ExecutionContext.SessionState.LanguageMode If ($sLangMode -ne “FullLanguage”){ Write-Host ” !! Unable to run scrit – Powershell Using Wrong Language Mode !! ” } Else{ ...

February 5, 2019 · 1 min · Tom

'Copy, Paste' With Powershell Sendkeys

This is really quick nugget of Powershell for anyone who is struggling to copy and paste into a particular window or dialog box. Perhaps it is a case of a website which prevents text form being sent to a field from the clipboard, or in my case, a windows UAC prompt. If you are following password best practices, your passwords should be long, complex and contain zero dictionary words. Furthermore, you should have a different password for every site and service. So, when a user interface doesn’t allow you to paste a password, life gets that little bit more difficult. ...

February 2, 2019 · 2 min · Tom