{"id":7181,"date":"2015-03-19T11:59:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T11:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2015\/03\/19\/powertip-read-exe-magic-number-with-powershell\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T10:30:13","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T17:30:13","slug":"powertip-read-exe-magic-number-with-powershell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/powertip-read-exe-magic-number-with-powershell\/","title":{"rendered":"PowerTip: Read .exe Magic Number with PowerShell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b style=\"font-size:12px\">Summary<\/b><span style=\"font-size:12px\">: Learn how to use Windows PowerShell to see an .exe magic number.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/q-for-powertip.jpg\" alt=\"Hey, Scripting Guy! Question\" \/>&nbsp;How can I use Windows PowerShell to see the &quot;magic number&quot; associated with an executable file in Windows?<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:30px\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/a-for-powertip.jpg\" alt=\"Hey, Scripting Guy! Answer\" \/>&nbsp;The term magic number refers to the bytes that occur at the beginning of every file and identify the format of file. <br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Use this command to read a Windows executable file header with Windows PowerShell:<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:90px\">&nbsp;[char[]](gc $env:windir\\notepad.exe -Encoding Byte -ReadCount 1 -TotalCount 2)<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:30px\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/7610.Dr.ScriptoForTips.jpg\" alt=\" \" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summary: Learn how to use Windows PowerShell to see an .exe magic number. &nbsp;How can I use Windows PowerShell to see the &quot;magic number&quot; associated with an executable file in Windows? &nbsp;The term magic number refers to the bytes that occur at the beginning of every file and identify the format of file. &nbsp; &nbsp; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[571,56,356,3,45],"class_list":["post-7181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-ben-vierck","tag-guest-blogger","tag-powertip","tag-scripting-guy","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Summary: Learn how to use Windows PowerShell to see an .exe magic number. &nbsp;How can I use Windows PowerShell to see the &quot;magic number&quot; associated with an executable file in Windows? &nbsp;The term magic number refers to the bytes that occur at the beginning of every file and identify the format of file. &nbsp; &nbsp; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}