I was asked to see if I could create a script to create a Users profile without the user being logged in.

So I searched Bing’d and Goog’d and couldn’t find a PowerShell Module where you could do that.  I then began the process of searching for folks that could get me started. Once I got the “starting” information I was able to put a script together.   this led me to a base script to create a user profile with Pinvoke . when I first put this code together it caused ISE / Powershell to Crash. So then I was again perplexed as to what do I do now.   So I Posted a question on it and thankfully someone else had started working on the same thing    @MS_dministrator.  He gave me a working way to get around the crashes I was experiencing with his script .  Now on to what and how it works.

The main task was to create a profile so I’ll explain that first.

In order to use the interopservices / pinvoke I had to bring in System.runtime.interopservices.

thankfully Adamdriscoll did all the heaving lifting with his scripting that creates this type:

 Add-Type -TypeDefinition '
 using System;
 using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
 public static class PInvoke {
 [DllImport("userenv.dll", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
 public static extern int CreateProfile( [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] String pszUserSid, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] String pszUserName, [Out][MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] System.Text.StringBuilder pszProfilePath, uint cchProfilePath);
 }
 '

The next step was how to call that added type with the proper information.

$pszProfilePath = new-object -typename System.Text.StringBuilder
[int]$results = [PInvoke]::CreateProfile($UserSid, $UserName, $pszProfilePath, $ProfilePath)
}
$stringbuff = new-object system.text.stringbuilder(260)
[system.uint32]$a =$stringbuff.capacity
$sid = ((get-aduser -id 'brtestlocaluser').sid.value)
CreateProfile -usersid $sid -username 'brtestlocaluser' -ProfilePath $a

Here is where I found this code caused my ise and powershell process to crash.

function CreateProfile
{
param([String]$UserSid, [String]$UserName, [system.uint32]$ProfilePath)
Add-Type -TypeDefinition '
using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
public static class PInvoke {
[DllImport("userenv.dll", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
public static extern int CreateProfile( [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] String pszUserSid, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] String pszUserName, [Out][MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] System.Text.StringBuilder pszProfilePath, uint cchProfilePath);
}
'
$pszProfilePath = new-object -typename System.Text.StringBuilder
[int]$results = [PInvoke]::CreateProfile($UserSid, $UserName, $pszProfilePath, $ProfilePath)
}
$stringbuff = new-object system.text.stringbuilder(260)
[system.uint32]$a =$stringbuff.capacity
$sid = ((get-aduser -id 'brtestlocaluser').sid.value)
CreateProfile -usersid $sid -username 'brtestlocaluser' -ProfilePath $a

So with that in mind I sent out some Tweets to find out why this was crashing and I came across @MS_dministrator. He had already done some of the work to allow for a Pinvoke to be called.  What he did differently than what I was doing was to “wrap” the Pinvoke  in a Script Scope.  So the code I’m showing above ended up in being two functions one to register the native method the other function to add the native method.

function Register-NativeMethod
{
[CmdletBinding()]
[Alias()]
[OutputType([int])]
Param
(
# Param1 help description
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true,
Position=0)]
[string]$dll,

# Param2 help description
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true,
Position=1)]
[string]
$methodSignature
)

$script:nativeMethods += [PSCustomObject]@{ Dll = $dll; Signature = $methodSignature; }
}

Adding the Native Method:

function Add-NativeMethods
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    [Alias()]
    [OutputType([int])]
    Param($typeName = 'NativeMethods')

    $nativeMethodsCode = $script:nativeMethods | ForEach-Object { "
        [DllImport(`"$($_.Dll)`")]
        public static extern $($_.Signature);
    " }

    Add-Type @"
        using System;
        using System.Text;
        using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
        public static class $typeName {
            $nativeMethodsCode
        }
"@
}

Now to show how they are called in the new function that creates a user profile.  The first thing that is done is we try and see if the user that we need to create a profile for is Local to the machine.

New-LocalUser -username $UserName -password $Password;

If that user is local then we goto the new-localuser function in the same script.  Once that completes we are on to the Pinvoke code. First we declare a name for our method to be from the Pinvoke. In this case it’s going to be USERENVCP.  Then we see if it is already declared with the If statement:

$methodName = 'UserEnvCP'
    $script:nativeMethods = @();

    if (-not ([System.Management.Automation.PSTypeName]$MethodName).Type)
    {

If it’s not in our session then here is where we are going to use the functions described above to get our Pinvoke registered in our session.  So now we call Register-NativeMethod with our Dll and the method signature to register it.  Then immediately after that we add the native method so we can call it.

Register-NativeMethod "userenv.dll" "int CreateProfile([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string pszUserSid,`
         [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string pszUserName,`
         [Out][MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] StringBuilder pszProfilePath, uint cchProfilePath)";

        Add-NativeMethods -typeName $MethodName;

With the $methodname added now we can call it and create our profile:

    try
    {
        [UserEnvCP]::CreateProfile($userSID.Value, $Username, $sb, $pathLen) | Out-Null;
    }

Full code for the explained function is below:

function Create-NewProfile {

    [CmdletBinding()]
    [Alias()]
    [OutputType([int])]
    Param
    (
        # Param1 help description
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
                   ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true,
                   Position=0)]
        [string]$UserName,

        # Param2 help description
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,
                   ValueFromPipelineByPropertyName=$true,
                   Position=1)]
        [string]
        $Password
    )

    Write-Verbose "Creating local user $Username";

    try
    {
        New-LocalUser -username $UserName -password $Password;
    }
    catch
    {
        Write-Error $_.Exception.Message;
        break;
    }
    $methodName = 'UserEnvCP'
    $script:nativeMethods = @();

    if (-not ([System.Management.Automation.PSTypeName]$MethodName).Type)
    {
        Register-NativeMethod "userenv.dll" "int CreateProfile([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string pszUserSid,`
         [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string pszUserName,`
         [Out][MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] StringBuilder pszProfilePath, uint cchProfilePath)";

        Add-NativeMethods -typeName $MethodName;
    }

    $localUser = New-Object System.Security.Principal.NTAccount("$UserName");
    $userSID = $localUser.Translate([System.Security.Principal.SecurityIdentifier]);
    $sb = new-object System.Text.StringBuilder(260);
    $pathLen = $sb.Capacity;

    Write-Verbose "Creating user profile for $Username";

    try
    {
        [UserEnvCP]::CreateProfile($userSID.Value, $Username, $sb, $pathLen) | Out-Null;
    }
    catch
    {
        Write-Error $_.Exception.Message;
        break;
    }
}

Many thanks to the members of the community that helped me with getting this script built and working (@Ms_dminstrator, @adamdriscoll )…. The entire script can be found on my gist here:

I hope this helps someone

Until then keep Scripting

Thom