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

Question

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?

Answer 1

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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