What if you can't install Powershell?

Having successfully installed Powershell on XP and Windows Server 2003 I wasn't anticipating any problems with Vista. Sigh! I've been in IT long enough to know better!

The Vista installation package comes in the form of a Windows Installer update package rather than a stand alone .EXE file. On launching this file everything seemed to go well until the message "Windows was unable to install this update" appeared. Hmmm, time to look at the log files.

Windows Update helpfully records all of its activites in a log file called 'WindowsUpdate.log' that lives in your Windows directory. Looking through the file I could see the install starting and then failing with the error 'Windows failed to install the following update with error 0x80070020: Update for Windows (KB928439).' Googling this revealed an MS Knowledge Base article that pointed to my anti-virus software as the culprit. Sure enough disabling my Bitdefender AV allowed the install to complete and I'm now happily running Powershell on Vista :-)

Installing Powershell is just the beginning. There are plenty of extra tools and add-ons that you can find to enhance your Powershell scripting.

Some of my favorites are -

A helpful development tool

• PrimalScript is a general purpose code editor that understands Powershell
• Powershell IDE A nice IDE focussed solely on running Powershell scripts. Currently free.
• PowerPad a neat Notepad like extension for the Poweshell command prompt. Free.

Some Microsoft tools

• ADSI Edit- allows you to look under the hood of Active Directory and explore the partitions and edit and create items.
• WMI Administrative Tools- This download contains CIM Studio, a fantastic tool for letting you explore WMI - it's a bit like ADSI edit for WMI. You can explore the schema, retrieve WMI objects, run their methods an
• d register for WMI events. If you are at all interested in WMI you must install this toolset.

Powershell add-ons

• Power Gadgets Gorgeous, easy to use data visulation components. Not cheap but worth every penny! Make sure you watch the demo.

Other cool stuff

• Reflector Essential for exploring, decompiling and analysing .Net assemblies
• Reflector Powershell Language Allows you to decompile static methods into the Powershell language