I'm trying to remotely execute a PowerShell script using PSEXEC. The PowerShell script is called via a .cmd batch file. The reason we do this is to change the execution policy, run the powershell script then reset the execution policy again:

On the remote server do-tasks.cmd looks like:

powershell -command "&{ set-executionpolicy unrestricted}"  
powershell DoTasks.ps1  
powershell -command "&{ set-executionpolicy restricted}"  

The PowerShell script DoTasks.ps1 just does this for now:

Write-Output "Hello World!"

Both of these scripts live in c:\windows\system32 (for now) just so they're on the PATH.

On the originating server I do this:

psexec \\web1928 -u administrator -p "adminpassword" do-tasks.cmd

When this runs I get the following response at the command line:

c:\Windows\system32>powershell -command "&{ set-executionpolicy unrestricted}"

and the script runs no further.

I can't ctrl-c to break the script and I just see ^C characters, I can type input from the keyboard and the characters are echoed to console.

On the remote server I see that PowerShell.exe and CMD.exe are running in Task Manager's Process tab. If I end these processes then control returns to the command line on the originating server.

I have tried this with just a simple .cmd batch file with a @echo hello world and it works just fine.

Running do-tasks.cmd on the remote server via an RDP session works ok as well.

Why is my remote batch file getting stuck when executing via PSEXEC?