PowerShell Write-Host -NoNewLine

Question

I have the following script that finds the last reboot time of a list of computers. When I run this script, it puts the first computer name on a line, but the timestamp is on the second line. Subsequent computers are all on the same line.

Here is the example:

Computer1  
TimeStamp  
Computer2 TimeStamp  
Computer3 TimeStamp

etc...

I want it to be this:

Computer1 TimeStamp  
Computer2 TimeStamp  
Computer3 TimeStamp

What am I doing wrong?

Here is the code:

$listOfComputers = Import-Csv lastReboot.txt
ForEach($computer in $listOfComputers) {
  $name = $computer.Name
  Write-Host $name -NoNewLine
  $wmi = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem -Computer $name
  $wmi.ConvertToDateTime($wmi.LastBootUpTime)
}

Answer 1

You're mixing write-host and out-default for your output which will often result in items being displayed in the wrong sequence and other formatting problems:

Try:

$listOfComputers = IMPORT-CSV lastReboot.txt
ForEach($computer in $listOfComputers){
$name = $computer.Name
Write-Host "$name " -NoNewLine
$wmi = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem -Computer $name
write-host $wmi.ConvertToDateTime($wmi.LastBootUpTime)
}

Answer 2

When you use -computername with get-wmiobject , you get an additional field in the results - PSComputerName . You can select that field so that you get the name correlated to the other data easily.

Combine this with an expression in select-object , and you get a nice table. But wait - there's more!

Get-WMIObject can take an array of names for the -computername parameter, eliminating the need for your loop altogether.

$listOfComputers = IMPORT-CSV r:\lastReboot.txt
$wmi = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem -Computer $listOfComputers.Name;
$wmi |select pscomputername,@{Name="LastBootTime";Expression={$_.converttodatetime($_.lastbootuptime);}};

We can also eliminate the $wmi variable and do it all in one pipeline (linebreak added for clarity).

$listOfComputers = IMPORT-CSV r:\lastReboot.txt
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem -Computer $listOfComputers.Name |`
    select-object pscomputername,@{Name="LastBootTime";Expression={$_.converttodatetime($_.lastbootuptime);}};

Or even do the whole import, query & output in a single shot:

IMPORT-CSV r:\lastReboot.txt |`
    select-object -ExpandProperty name |`
    foreach-object{ Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_OperatingSystem -Computer $_} |`
    select-object pscomputername,@{Name="LastBootTime";Expression={$_.converttodatetime($_.lastbootuptime);}};

If you need to keep the data for use later, you can assign that to a variable with $wmi = at the beginning of either of the last 2 examples (second line in the first example, to be exact).

Edit: I just remembered that the AliasProperty PSComputerName was added in v3 (or is broken in v2). So if you're using v2, you'll need to use __SERVER instead.