PowerShell v3 Ipconfig Select-String

PowerShell v3 Ipconfig and Select String

The purpose of this page is control the output of Ipconfig with PowerShell’s Select-String.

PowerShell v3 Ipconfig

• Introduction to PowerShell and Ipconfig
• Example 1: To List Just IP Addresses
• Example 2: To Display the Default Gateway
• Troubleshooting Ipconfig

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Introduction to PowerShell and Ipconfig

Ipconfig has been built-in to each Microsoft operating systems from Windows 3.11 onwards. My primary use of this utility is to display a computer’s IP or MAC address.  Other common use of Ipconfig is to release and renew IP address leases for DHCP clients.

Traditionally, Ipconfig has been used in a DOS box.  One of my ways of weaning people away from CMD.exe and into PowerShell ISE, is to persuade them to run native utilities, such as Ipconfig, in PowerShell instead of cmd.

The purpose of this page is to give extra reasons for using PowerShell by adding useful supplementary commands such as Select-String, or its new alias ‘sls’.

Example 1: To List Just IP Addresses

Let us take stock: we are using the built-in operating system command Ipconfig and then piping (|) the output into Select-String, where we filter the data for ‘IP’ information.

Result:

Note 1:  For comparison you could try plain:
Ipconfig

Example 2: To Display the Default Gateway

The above example almost begs you to select other information, for instance, instead of ‘IP’ you could try ‘IPv4’, ‘Gateway’, or even DNS.  Also observe below how I substitute the alias ‘sls’ for Select-String.

Result:

See more on PowerShell’s Select-String »

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Research More Ipconfig Switches

Get-Help does not work with Ipconfig, however you can use its native help command /? thus:

Amongst the parameters listed /release and /renew the most commonly used, and useful commands that are often forgotten are: Ipconfig /flushdns and  /displaydns.

Troubleshooting Why Ipconfig is Not Working

Here are ideas for using PowerShell to overcome common problems with Ipconfig. 

Remember the Switch: Ipconfig /All

Problem: Why can’t you see the MAC address? 

Solution: PowerShell with Ipconfig’s /All parameter.

Physical Address is the formal name for MAC address.

 See top 10 administrative commands to run in PowerShell »

Troubleshooting Ipconfig

Problem: ‘Ipconfig’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Solution: Check the path to Ipconfig:

Result: You should see: C:\Windows\system32; if not then append this folder to the path thus:

Check that the executable exists: just in case someone has deleted ipconfig try this:

Build a Function Get-IPConfig

Another strategy is to build your own PowerShell function based on ideas from this page.  For example we could build a function called -MAC which would display the Physical Address, for example: 20-CF-30-3A-B3-73.

See more about creating the Get-IPConfig function »

Summary of PowerShell Ipconfig with Select-String

Ipconfig was once used exclusively in a DOS box.  One of my ways of weaning people away from CMD.exe and into PowerShell ISE, is to persuade them to run native utilities, such as Ipconfig, in PowerShell instead of cmd.  The killer reason for switching is combining Ipconfig with Select-String.

See more Microsoft PowerShell tutorials

• PowerShell Tutorials  • Methods  • Cmdlets  • PS Snapin  • Profile.ps1  • Exchange 2007

• Command & Expression Mode  • PowerShell pipeline (|)  • PowerShell ‘where‘  • PowerShell ‘Sort’

• Windows PowerShell Modules  • Import-Module  • PowerShell Module Directory 

If you see an error of any kind, do let me know.  Please report any factual mistakes, grammatical errors or broken links.