Cheat Sheet
Windows & PowerShell
Windows Internals
Understand the boot process, registry structure, and user profiles. Familiarize yourself with service management (sc.exe, services.msc) and driver signing.
Active Directory Basics
- Domains, trees, forests
- Core AD structural concepts, along with organizational units and GPOs
- dsadd, dsmod, dsrm
- User and group management
- Common tasks
- Password resets, account unlocks, group membership changes
- Troubleshooting
- Replication issues, DNS integration checks, event logs
Basic Networking
IP addressing, DNS, DHCP, routing, and basic firewall rules (Windows Firewall, netsh).
- ping, tracert
- Connectivity checks
- nslookup
- DNS resolution checks
- ipconfig
- Show IP configuration
PowerShell — Core Commands
- Get-Process, Get-Service
- System info
- Get-EventLog
- Read event logs
- Test-Connection
- Network connectivity check (PowerShell's ping)
- Get-NetAdapter
- Network adapter info
- Get-DnsClient
- DNS client info
- Get-ChildItem
- List files/directories (PowerShell's ls)
- Move-Item, Copy-Item, Remove-Item
- File/directory management
PowerShell — Scripting Basics
- Variables, loops, conditionals
- if, foreach
- Functions, modules
- Including dot-sourcing
- Get-ADUser, Get-ADGroup
- Query Active Directory (requires RSAT)
- Set-ADUser
- Modify an AD user (requires RSAT)