PS Fab:\\> PowerShell Blog - Restart computer if...

I like to find new needs to fill… Once again, I found one today on LinkedIn: Sambasiva Rao K. asked for some help on the “PowerShell Power Users” LinkedIn discussion group:

I have a requirement where i wanted to monitor the last modified time of a .MDB file and compare it with local system time and if it differences more than 1hour, i want my system to be restarted.

So, here we are:

$TestFile=Get-ChildItem -Path MyFile.mbd | Where {(!($_.PSIsContainer)) -and ($_.LastWriteTime -gt ((Get-Date).AddHours(-1)))}
if ($TestFile) {Write-Host "Restarting now..." ; Restart-Computer} else {Write-Host "Nothing to do..."}

Has to be scheduled, each 30 minutes for example (obviously less than an hour…).
http://www.zerrouki.com/schedule-a-powershell-script-execution/

Sambasiva Rao says:

28/02/2013 at 15:25

Hi Fabrice ZERROUKI,

Many many thanks for considering my request and helping me with the solution.

I had tested the above script in my environment and observe the script always rebooting the machine every time it runs even though, the .MDB file is updated within the last 1hour.

I am not an expert in powershell, however would like to ask a doubt in the script..

I am seeing ‘If loop’ is not validating anything..? Whatever might be the case, it will pick the first condition and reboot the machine. I am not sure this is the reason for the issue or might be different but thought of letting you know..

Any suggestions..??

Thanks, Sambasiva

Fab says:
28/02/2013 at 15:36
Hi Sambasiva,
I am confused! 🙂
I will comment the code a little bit to explain how it works
```
$TestFile=Get-ChildItem -Path MyFile.mbd | Where {(!($_.PSIsContainer)) -and ($_.LastWriteTime -gt ((Get-Date).AddHours(-1)))}
```
Here we put in the variable $TestFile the result of the command.
The command itself is to list the files named MyFile.mdb if it’s been modified in the last hour (Now – 1h)
```
if ($TestFile) {Write-Host "Restarting now..." ; Restart-Computer} else {Write-Host "Nothing to do..."}
```
I am seeing ‘If loop’ is not validating anything..?
Not exactly. Here we test if the $TestFile variable is null or not. If the Get-ChildItem has returned a result (so if it has found a file MyFile.mdb modified in the last hour) the $TestFile variable contains the filename, if not the $TestFile variable is null.

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