Chapter 12. A practical interlude
It’s time to put some of your new knowledge to work. In this chapter, we’re not even going to try to teach you anything new. Instead, we’re going to walk you through a detailed example using what you’ve learned. This is an absolutely real-world example: We’re going to set ourselves a task, and then let you follow our thought processes as we figure out how to complete it. This chapter is the epitome of what this book is all about, because instead of just handing you the answer on how to do something, we’re helping you realize that you can teach yourself.
First of all, we’re assuming that you’re working on Windows 10 or on Windows Server 2012 R2, or later, and that you have PowerShell v5 or later installed. The example we’re going to work through may well work on earlier versions of Windows and PowerShell, but we tested on Windows 10 with PowerShell v5. We know that this won’t work on Linux or macOS, because those operating systems don’t have the same concept of user privilege as Windows.
Our goal is to use PowerShell to modify some of the default user privileges on the local system. These aren’t permissions, exactly, but rather system-wide tasks that a user or group has the ability to perform.