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These are the kinds of paths that you need to deal with when you interact with files that are backed up by the Volume Shadow Copy Service. In particular, it doesn’t know how to interpret special device object paths, such as: \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy2\Windows\System32\calc.exe. As it turns out though, there are certain file paths that the Windows PowerShell file provider doesn’t know how to handle. Now, you may have just asked the question, “Why would I want to call CopyFile when Windows PowerShell already has the Copy-Item cmdlet?” In the examples that follow, I use the CopyFile function in kernel32.dll as the function that Windows PowerShell will interact with. Use reflection to dynamically define a method that calls the Windows API function.Get a reference to a private type in the.This is the officially documented method. Use the Add-Type cmdlet to compile C# code.In Windows PowerShell, there are three ways to interact with Windows API functions: For example, kernel32.dll exposes hundreds of functions that can be used by developers for interacting with the operating system. For those who are not familiar with the Windows API, basically, it refers to the functionality that is exposed by your built-in system DLLs.
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I often finding myself needing to use Windows PowerShell to interact with Windows API functions to accomplish a low-level task. Matt first joined us as a guest yesterday with his post Use PowerShell and Regular Expressions to Search Binary Data. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. Summary: Guest blogger, Matt Graeber, discusses how to use Windows PowerShell to interact with Windows API functions in Part 1 of a three-part series.
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