Finding PowerShell Cmdlets equivalent to GUI actions (cross post) [closed]

Question

DISCLAIMER: I've read on the meta that cross-posting is OK if one is stil looking for an answer. So the following is a duplicate of a question on StackOverflow even though it is probably more approriate here. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46661988/finding-powershell-cmdlets-equivalent-to-gui-actions

I will just add that I know I can look up every single GUI action's Powershell equivalent on Google but this is very time consuming and I was hoping to find a better way (ideally an online resource like TechNet Library but easier/faster to search and up-to-date).

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I would like to know where I could find good resources/documentation on configuring a new Windows10 installation using Powershell scripts. I know bash but I'm completely new to Powershell.

When I search google, all I can find about automatically configuring Windows relates to Windows Deployment Services. But I don't have and don't want a Windows Server and simply running a few scripts after each installation is sufficient for me.

I found a few scripts that solve some of the things I want to do:

github => FlatlanderWoman/winCleaner

github => hahndorf/Set-Privacy

But for everything else, when I look into the TechNet Library I find it very hard to find anything useful. And when I do find something, it looks outdated: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh852115.aspx

The problem is: I known the GUI-way of configuring everything I want, but I don't know how to find the corresponding commandlets to do the same with Powershell.

Is there some kind of event listener I could use to find the Cmdlets? Or does anyone have some resources/documentation to recommend? Is the TechNet Library really the established way to find these commands?

Thank you.

Answer 1

There is no universal library that will list all cmdlets and especially no library that offers a mapping for cmdlets and GUI. Especially since there are various modules that organize GUI and cmdlets way differently.

What you could do however is use Get-Module -ListAvailable to get a list of modules that are available on your system and Get-Command to get a list of currently available cmdlets. However, both of those will only work for "standard" situations. So the modules have to be in one of the module directories and it has to be an actual cmdlet. So you won't find help for dism or similar using Get-Command and/or Get-Help.

Looking at your available cmdlets (possibly filtering using Where-Object) and figuring out what you actually want to do, is probably still the fastest way. Using Get-Help (at least for "common" Windows cmdlets) you will get a technet link to a description of the command.

Depending on what you're actually trying to do resources like PowerShell Gallery might offer you options for modules that do what you want to without getting a headache figuring how to do it.