I Love Powershell

Are you tired of entering the system tag information by hand on Dell’s support web site?  You want a fast and easy way to automate Dell support with PowerShell.  I’ll show you how to Automate Dell Support With PowerShell in this life changing series!

This week, we’re learning how to open Dell’s support site with the system tag filled in automatically.

If you previously read my post on getting the Dell System Tag from WMI you may have, like me, come away from it with one big problem.  In the article, I say that you can enter the system tag into Dell’s support page.  That is a little lame, don’t you think?  Audacious, in fact, to suggest that a PowerShell user should have to do anything!

So, with my apologies, here is a very quick improvement to help you get to your Dell Support Page that much faster.

How To Open Dell’s Support Page with the System Tag Already Filled In

function popup-Dellinfo

{
$systemtag = (gwmi win32_bios).serialnumber      

#Thanks to Jeffrey Snover for pointing out the Win32_BIOS class

$ie = new-object -com "InternetExplorer.Application"

$webaddress= [string]::Format("

http://support.dell.com/support/DPP/Index.aspx?c=us&cs=RC956904&l=en&s=hied&ServiceTag={0}",$systemtag)

$ie.Navigate($webaddress)

$ie.visible=$true
}

Drop that function into PowerShell, or add it to your PowerShell profile.

That’s pretty good, but I think it can be better.

To see it go from this rudimentary function to something more robust come back next week.  Or subscribe to this blog and read it the day it comes out in your RSS reader!

I administer a lot of computer brands, and support a wide ecosystem.  But I see a lot of Dell Laptops, Desktops, and Servers in my normal day-to-day.  A common task is to rebuild a system, or to update a driver after troubleshooting blue screens.

When it’s time to download drivers, there’s one sequence of events that I don’t want to do anymore:

1. Turn over laptop
2. Read the serial number
3. Tell myself “I got this”
4. Stare at the serial number
5. Memorize the serial number
6. Turn the laptop back over, and enter the serial number onto the support webpage
7. Forget the stupid serial number halfway through (cause it’s the serial number that’s stupid, not me, right?)
8. Repeat steps 1-7 again (do step 8 only one time.  If today is Monday and you have not had coffee yet, do step 8 two times)
9. Fine!  Write down the stupid serial number
10. Tell myself “No problem – I told you I got this”

Now that I’m more refined in my technique, I can show you my simple way to find the serial number or system tag of a Dell computer by using PowerShell:

get-wmiobject Win32_SystemEnclosure | select SerialNumber

That actually returns a PSCustomObject.  Now, you might want to get right at the string value instead.  If you’re putting the computers serial number or system tag through the pipeline, or saving it to a file, then you should use this instead – it will return just the string value stored in WMI.

(gwmi Win32_SystemEnclosure).SerialNumber

Here, we invoke the alias for get-wmiObject, gwmi.  It is exactly the same, just fewer keystrokes.  Then, we use the parenthesis to turn it into an object, and put the “.” (dot) there to get access to the properties.

This can also be used to get the system tag for a remote system by using the –computername parameter on the get-wmiobject cmdlet

gwmi win32_systemenclosure –computername remotesystem-pc

This is the best way that I’ve found to get the information from a Dell computer.  You can use the Service Tag on their website to get up to date drivers and warranty information.

Here’s a great piece of profile customization: Make your PowerShell session have a dark red background each time it starts a session running as an administrator.

To do this, I look the built in $host variable, which has several properties in it, such as the foreground color and the background color of the shell.  Here’s the difference between a PowerShell session running in normal mode (blue screen) vs. administrator mode (red screen)

Blue background on regular session

Red background on an administrative session

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Excellent profile customization.  I use this one myself, and honestly it’s my favorite one.  Keeps my head in the right place.

This PowerShell profile customization is simple and sweet:  Go grab a webpage source; parse the lines to get to the juice; display a daily bible verse on my PowerShell console.

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If you want a fast way to get information about the uninstallers that are listed in the registry, then check out this simple script to parse out some information for you. 

This little baby asks you for a search term, then grabs the pertinent software uninstall information out of the HKey Local Machine registry hive.

It’s simple and effective,  and I put it together in just a couple of minutes.  It could stand to have some polish on it, but it does the job and it does it like now!

Would you improve it?  How?  Comments are open.

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Alright, so you’ve built up your skills, developed your script, got all the kinks worked out and now it’s time to set the sucker up to do your work for you.  I know, I’ve been there myself.

This tutorial shows you how to setup a scheduled task to run your PowerShell scripts’

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