More about PowerShell on Vista

As I noted yesterday, PowerShell RTM is not yet available from Microsoft for use with Vista RTM. The PowerShell team made some changes late in the game, and the installer for Vista is not ready. This is dissapointing to me as I'm running Vista RTM and really want to get PowerShell going!

The lack of a working installer, however hasn't stopped enerprising geeks from finding a way to do it (and sharing it).

The first hack for getting PowerShell RTM to run on Vista RTM was a blog post I pointed to yesterday. Last night, superstar MCT Fermin Sanchez posted some updated instructions. I followed both sets of instructions and now have PowerShell 1.0 RTM running on Vista RTM.

The approach is to do the following:

1. Install Powershell RTM on an XP SP2 system.
2. Copy the c:\windows\system32\windowspowershell\ folder *(and it's contents) from your XP box to your Vista box.
3. On the XP box, search for the 5 key DLLs noted in Fermin's postt. These will be in the GAC on the XP box. You need to copy each of these to the C:\Windows\System32\windowspowershell\v1.0 folder on your Vista computer.
4. Add each of these DLLs to the GAC on your Vista computer, using GACUTIL. You will need to download the .NET SDK and install it to get the GACUTIL comamnd.
5. Populate the registry with the proper keys. There's a .reg file you can get from jon davis's sitee.
6. Last but not least, create a shortcut in your quick lauch tray and you're up and running.

Note: I am pretty certain this is not supported in any way, shape or form. But it takes about 10 minutes and seems to work well enough. Please do not do this on a production machine.