Manual Installation of PowerShell RTM on Vista RTM
I’m impatient, and I can’t wait two months for a delay of PowerShell RTM to show up on Windows Vista RTM (which I now have running solidly on my new $600 El Cheapo laptop).
Here’s how I got PowerShell running on Vista RTM. I have no idea whether it’s a stable manual install or whether tons of features are missing, all I know is that I got powershell.exe to give me a prompt. This is completely unsupported by Microsoft and might mess things up on your Vista RTM computer once Microsoft releases the official build–you will have to manually uninstall by doing these steps in reverse.
[UPDATE (12/17/2006):] Looks like someone found a better way.. http://gaurhothw.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!52B0837064D0B275!106.entry
This assumes that you are using Vista RTM 32-bit.
1. From a machine running XP SP2 with PowerShell RTM installed, copy the following directories with their contents to Windows Vista RTM.
– C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell
– C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\WindowsPowerShell
NOTE: Some people are saying that the Reference Assemblies directory is invalid. Please view my 11/29/2006 comment in the comments (click on the Comments link). Someone found that they should be in C:\Windows\Assembly. I guess I found them in Program Files because I had previously installed a beta and that path got locked by way of a registry key.
2. Add the DLLs in the directory C:\Program Files\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0 to the GAC by using "gacutil /i assembly.dll" for each DLL (replacing "assembly.dll" with the filename).
3. Download, extract, and execute the registry set from the URL below. This set is basically all instances of "PowerShell" I could find in my XP registry… unfortunately, it also includes some old Windows SDK CTP references that the Windows SDK CTP uninstaller did not clean out. No harm done, just adds useless junk to the registry.
http://www.jondavis.net/downloads/powershell/vistartm/ps_reg_all.zip
(Note: The HTTP host http://www.jondavis.net currently resolves to http://home.jondavis.net:880, beware port-blocking firewalls)
4. Start PowerShell from C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\PowerShell.exe
If I forgot to list something in this list, you’re on your own.
I had added a shortcut to PowerShell on my XP SP2 QuickLaunch toolbar. I copied the shortcut file from the XP environment to my Vista environment (this brings me the width/height/color settings). Still to-do: Be sure to ngen all the assemblies for improved performance.
Jon
StimpyWP 
Very useful information, Jon. I\’ve not been able to put this on Vista RC2, but I\’m installing RTM on a serious machine next Thursday.
This package didn\’t install, either:
Windows PowerShell 1.0 RC2 English-Language Installation Package for Windows Vista RC1 and Windows Server code named "Longhorn" IDS Build 5600 x86 Edition (KB923569)Windows PowerShell 1.0 RC2 English-Language Installation Package for Windows Vista RC1 and Windows Server code named "Longhorn" IDS Build 5600 x86 Edition (KB923569)
Interestingly, I see some photos of Powershell on the Vista Team Blog:
http://windowsvistablog.com/photos/blog_photo_gallery/picture480170.aspx
Anyway, I guess you\’re not only a guru, you\’re a prophet.
Best regards,
Mike
This was very interesting and I wanted to do the same however C:\\Program Files\\Reference Assemblies\\Microsoft\\WindowsPowerShell doesn\’t exist on several different XP SP2 machines with PowerShell RTM installed.
Anyone any ideas?
If you\’re not finding C:\\Program Files\\Reference Assemblies\\Microsoft\\WindowsPowerShell then try doing a file scan of System.Management.Automation.dll. The DLLs in the C:\\Program Files\\Reference Assemblies\\Microsoft\\WindowsPowerShell directory are:
Directory: Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\\FileSystem::C:\\Program Files\\Reference Assemblies\\Microsoft\\WindowsPowerShell\\ v1.0
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name—- ————- —— —–a— 9/28/2006 3:49 PM 139264 Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Management.dll-a— 9/28/2006 3:49 PM 294912 Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Utility.dll-a— 9/28/2006 3:49 PM 200704 Microsoft.PowerShell.ConsoleHost.dll-a— 9/28/2006 3:49 PM 65536 Microsoft.PowerShell.Security.dll-a— 9/28/2006 3:49 PM 1564672 System.Management.Automation.dll
Come to think of it that date is older than RTM isn\’t it … Let me do another scan
Jon – I found them in Windows\\assembly
Thanks
Jon – I am not able to find the original dll\’s though. I wonder if the new update installer deletes them after they are ngened?
Hey Jon,
Great job in discovering this workaround, however, I was wondering whether you have found a workaround for the Powershell 1.0 RTM as apparently like the previous comment, the dlls are no longer present and the assembly location has changed. I\’d love to help you out in this regard if needed. Thanks.
Garion