Getting a PSCredential Object

PowerShell Help
1

A little setup first…

I have a Windows 8.1 physical box that is only allow to be logged into with a Domain Admin account. All other accounts are denied via GPO’s. On that physical box I am also running virtual machines for Server Administrators, and Workstation Admins that restrict logons to only those accounts via GPOs as well.

From my Physical box as a domain admin and I am attempting to run a script that will query the other boxes. When running on the other boxes I need to pass the credentials of a user that is authorized to login (e.g. server admin, workstation admin) so that I can read some registry keys. I am using invoke-command do to so (Invoke-Command –computerName $ServerName –ScriptBlock {(Get-ItemProperty).SomeValue} –credentials $Creds

When I am running the scrips as a Domain Admin on the physical box, or Server Admin on the Server Admin Hyper-V box, or Workstation Admin… you get the point, I don’t need to pass credentials to the function to read the keys, I already have access to the remote server but the command does not seem to run with the –credentials $Creds being blank. So I am trying to capture MY credentials of the machine that I am logged into without having to retype my username and password again to pass to in $Creds.

OR, am I going about this entirely wrong? I am just trying to avoid a bunch of If statements. I just wanted to pass creds that I already possess.

2

If you want to authenticate as the current user, just don’t pass anything to the Credential parameter at all (take the -Credential $Creds part out of your command.)

If you have some code that should optionally use a Credential object, use splatting, like so:

$splat = @{}

if ($Creds)
{
    $splat['Credential'] = $Creds
}

Invoke-Command @splat -ComputerName $ServerName -ScriptBlock { (Get-ItemProperty).SomeValue }
3

Dave, I think that will do the trick! Now I just have to wait until Monday to get back to work to test it out.

4

Alternatively you could also store your password as an encrypted string and build your credentials objects based on the encrypted string stored on disk.