Installing PowerShell on 600 client computers - Recommended settings

Question

I want to install PowerShell to 600 Window XP computers, and use it as the main processing shell. For example, for replacing batch scripts, VB scripts, and some other little programs. The installation process is not a problem. Some issues I think I'm going to come across are:

1. Changing permissions to allow PowerShell to run scripts

2. The speed of PowerShell starting

3. Using PowerShell for logon/logoff scripts with GPO

Problem 2: There is a script that is supposed to speed up PowerShell, but it seems to need to be run as administrator (which of course isn't something that normal users do). Has anyone had any experience with using PowerShell in this way?

Answer 1

To speed up the start of PowerShell, Jeffrey Snover (the partner/architect responsible for PowerShell) provides an "Update-GAC" script here.

Basically, it is just running through the assemblies that are loaded for PowerShell and NGen'ing (pre-compiling the IL to machine code) them. This does speed up the start of PowerShell.

Another trick is to run PowerShell with the -nologo and -noprofile switches.

This will skip the profile scripts and splash logo.

There is a product for using PowerShell for logon/logoff scripts from Special Operations Software. There are other ways to do it also.

%windir%\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -nologo -noprofile