Powershell broke - basic commands not working, not loading modules from common folders

Question

Powershell broke - basic commands not working, not loading modules from common folders

Mikhail Ladanov 1

At some point my Powershell broke. Standard commands like 'Write-Host' stopped working.
I was using VS Code on Windows 10 and using PowerShell 5.1
Checked all the environmental variables, everything looks fine.
Couldn't fix it and got a new machine.
Did literally the following:

Installed VS Code
Turned on Powershell extension in VS Code
It prompted something about Package Manager needing an update or it will not work properly
Asked me to install NuGet to get the Package Manager
After that PowerShell 5.1 stopped working again.
Somewhere in between installed Git

After that PowerShell stopped working.
Exactly the same symptoms: Modules not autoloading, fresh instance of powershell does this:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Write-Host
Write-Host : The term 'Write-Host' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify 
that the path is correct and try again.
At line:1 char:1
+ Write-Host
+ ~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (Write-Host:String) [], CommandNotFoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException

Did some more troubleshooting. Created a local user and repeated all the steps:

Created a local user
Installed VS Code
Installed Powershell Extension within VS Code
It asked to update PackageManagement
Said it needed NuGet to update PackageManagement, installed
Installed Git

Everything is working.
Some more troubleshooting showed that my main user does not look into folders C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules;C:\WINDOWS\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules when looking for a cmdlet. It only looks into C:\Users\myMainUser\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules. So I either have to do Import-Module -Name Microsoft.PowerShell.Management and so on, or copy all the modules into C:\Users\myMainUser\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules.
My temporary user apparently functions normally.
Any ideas?

Roadrunner 16 Reputation points

2021-08-25T11:26:48.263+00:00

Hi,
I know it's quite a while ago and you may have fixed the problem alredy somehow. But in case that someone else is facing the same issue, here is what we found.
We had the same effect: Remote or directly on the client, most of the common PowerShell commands like 'Get-Host' were "...not recognized as the name of a cmdlet". The reason for this was some basic PS modules were not automatically imported on startup (e.g. Microsoft.PowerShell.Management).
Running the command "Get-Module -ListAvailable -Refresh" should usually correct such issues when they are caused by soem kind of cache corruption, but when I run it, I saw that some modules that are present in "C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\" were not even listed in the output of this command.
It turned out that a not yet identified process has change the attributes on some of the PS-Module-folders under the above path to "Hidden". That caused them to not load automatically on PS startup. Switching all folders attribute to visible fixed the problem immediately.
Dave Burton 6 Reputation points

2024-05-10T01:54:08.9033333+00:00

Powershell is garbage in Windows 11. Many basic "DOS commands" which work fine in CMD don't work at all in Powershell. Even a simple thing like "dir /?" or "help dir" to get syntax help fails in Powershell.
Rich Matheisen 47,901 Reputation points

2024-05-10T18:57:20.2866667+00:00

In PowerShell "dir" is an alias for the "Get-ChildItem" cmdlet. CMD and PowerShell (or PWSH) are not the same shells.

"help dir" works as it should . . . returning the help for Get-ChildItem.

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Roadrunner 16 Reputation points

2021-08-25T11:26:48.263+00:00

Hi,
I know it's quite a while ago and you may have fixed the problem alredy somehow. But in case that someone else is facing the same issue, here is what we found.
We had the same effect: Remote or directly on the client, most of the common PowerShell commands like 'Get-Host' were "...not recognized as the name of a cmdlet". The reason for this was some basic PS modules were not automatically imported on startup (e.g. Microsoft.PowerShell.Management).
Running the command "Get-Module -ListAvailable -Refresh" should usually correct such issues when they are caused by soem kind of cache corruption, but when I run it, I saw that some modules that are present in "C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\" were not even listed in the output of this command.
It turned out that a not yet identified process has change the attributes on some of the PS-Module-folders under the above path to "Hidden". That caused them to not load automatically on PS startup. Switching all folders attribute to visible fixed the problem immediately.
Dave Burton 6 Reputation points

2024-05-10T01:54:08.9033333+00:00

Powershell is garbage in Windows 11. Many basic "DOS commands" which work fine in CMD don't work at all in Powershell. Even a simple thing like "dir /?" or "help dir" to get syntax help fails in Powershell.
Rich Matheisen 47,901 Reputation points

2024-05-10T18:57:20.2866667+00:00

In PowerShell "dir" is an alias for the "Get-ChildItem" cmdlet. CMD and PowerShell (or PWSH) are not the same shells.

"help dir" works as it should . . . returning the help for Get-ChildItem.

Answer 1

Anonymous

Hi,

Check if $env:PSModulePath contains C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules;C:\WINDOWS\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules. If not, add them to the system variable "PSModulePath" in Environment Variables in System Properties window.

Best Regards，
Ian Xue

============================================

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Mikhail Ladanov 1 Reputation point

2021-01-05T07:21:54.163+00:00

Yes, it does contain all those paths. As I mentioned, "Checked all the environmental variables, everything looks fine."
$ENV:PSModulePath is identical between two users (except for the user name)
Anonymous

2021-01-05T07:53:51.177+00:00

What does $PSModuleAutoloadingPreference return? Set $PSModuleAutoLoadingPreference = 'All' and see if the modules are imported automatically.
Mikhail Ladanov 1 Reputation point

2021-01-05T16:20:52.65+00:00

It was set to 'All'. Again, all variables are correct.
Mikhail Ladanov 1 Reputation point

2021-01-05T23:58:57.847+00:00

Correction, it was empty on both good and bad users, setting it explicitly to 'All' doesn't change anything
Anonymous

2021-01-06T07:12:40.217+00:00

Are there any differences between the good and bad users' profile files in %HOMEPATH%\Documents\WindowsPowerShell? Can the modules be imported automatically in Windows PowerShell or Windows PowerShell ISE?

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Powershell broke - basic commands not working, not loading modules from common folders

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