Bits & Other Bytes

Recently, I updated one of our internal tool kits, and then packaged it for distribution.  It was a busy day when I updated it, so I didn’t manage to package it on the same day as I had updated / built / compiled it.  Internally, we use the date as the version number of the tool (occasionally suffixed with a letter which indicates my screw-ups in the build process on that given day).  In this particular case, the version number was 2018-11-24b, indicating I updated it on 2018-11-24, and that this was the 3 revision (no suffix, a, then b) that I had created on 2018-11-24 (I found bugs in the first two after testing the packaging).

Because I wasn’t packaging on the same day as I updated it, the time stamps on my archives didn’t match the build date, so I need to change them – all of them!  So I figured up PowerShell and used it instead.  Below are the commands necessary to view and set both the creation and modification timestamps on a file via an elevated PowerShell prompt.

As always – Use any tips, tricks, or scripts I post at your own risk.

To view the file creation timestamp:

(Get-ChildItem “c:\path\file_to_change.wim”).CreationTime

To set the file creation timestamp:

(Get-ChildItem “c:\path\file_to_change.wim”).CreationTime = ’11/24/2018 11:24AM’

To view the file modification timestamp:

(Get-ChildItem “c:\path\file_to_change.wim”).LastWriteTime

To set the file modification timestamp:

(Get-ChildItem “c:\path\file_to_change.wim”).LastWriteTime = ’11/24/2018 11:24AM’

To set the creation and modification timestamp on every single file in a folder:

foreach ($objFile in Get-ChildItem “c:\path\*”) {$objFile.Creationtime = ’11/24/2018 11:24AM’}

foreach ($objFile in Get-ChildItem “c:\path\*”) {$objFile.LastWriteTime = ’11/24/2018 11:24AM’}