Why does my PowerShell script hang when called in PSEXEC via a batch (.cmd) file?
- by Kev
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?
