Creating console screenshots with Get-ScreenshotFromVM.ps1

This posting is ~6 years years old. You should keep this in mind. IT is a short living business. This information might be outdated.

Today, I had a very interesting discussion. As part of an ongoing troubleshooting process, console screenshots of virtual machines should be created.

The colleagues, who were working on the problem, already found a PowerCLI script that was able to create screenshots using the Managed Object Reference (MoRef). But unfortunately all they got were black screens and/ or login prompts. Latter were the reason why they were unable to run the script unattended. They used the Get-VMScreenshot script, which was written by Martin Pugh.

I had some time to take a look at his script and I created my own script, which is based on his idea and some parts of his code.

This file is also available on GitHub.

One important note: If you want to take console screenshots of VMs, please make sure that display power saving settings are disabled! Windows VMs are showing a black screen after some minutes. Please disable this using the energy options, or better using a GPO. Otherwise you will capture a black screen!

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Patrick Terlisten
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1 thought on “Creating console screenshots with Get-ScreenshotFromVM.ps1”

  1. jons

    some error
    please help
    Invoke-WebRequest : The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust relationship for the SSL/TLS secure channel.
    At E:AnalystAutomation_ScriptsC1.ps1:78 char:6
    + Invoke-WebRequest -Uri XXXXXXX
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (System.Net.HttpWebRequest:HttpWebRequest) [Invoke-WebRequest], WebException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : WebCmdletWebResponseException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.InvokeWebRequestC

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