IsPortActive — Check if a port is open/active/listening on your computer with one command in PowerShell
Lately I’ve been troubleshooting various types of networking related issues.
It is common to check for open/active/listening ports.
Unfortunately Microsoft hasn’t made this that easy — you have to connect the dots between commands, process IDs, and paths.
IsPortActive is a PowerShell script that provides a simple yet effective method to check the activity of a port on your system. It offers three different options to perform the check:
- By Port Number
You can specify the port number to check for active connections. - By Process Name
You can specify the name of the process to check active connections. - By Process ID
You can specify the process ID to check for active connections.
If the process name is svchost
, the script will find the service and display name in addition to the process name.
Usage
IsPortActive [-Port <int>] [-ProcessName <string>] [-ProcessId <int>] [-Version] [-Help] [-CheckForUpdate]
Parameters
Only one of the following parameters can be used at a time.
-Port
: Specifies the port number to check for active connections.-ProcessName
: Specifies the name of the process to check for active connections.-ProcessId
: Specifies the process ID to check for active connections.-Version
: Displays the version of the script.-Help
: Displays the help information for the script.-CheckForUpdate
: Checks for updates of the script.
Examples
To provide further clarity on how to use IsPortActive, let’s look at a few examples:
- Check if port 443 is active:
IsPortActive -Port 443
- Check what ports are being used by process
httpd
:IsPortActive -ProcessName “httpd”
- Check what ports are being used by process ID
1234
:IsPortActive -ProcessId 1234
By following these steps and utilizing appropriate parameters, you can effectively use IsPortActive to check the status of ports on your system.
Consider becoming a Medium member if you appreciate reading stories like this and want to help me as a writer. It costs $5 per month and gives you unlimited access to Medium content. I’ll get a little commission if you sign up via my link.