Open Browser in Powershell just stopped working

Question

I've been creating Windows Powershell scripts to automate Web UI Testing for the past couple of weeks. They have all worked fine until today I ran them and got a million exceptions. I tried to manually create an InternetExplorer object:

$ie = new-object -com "InternetExplorer.Application"

And I get this error:

New-Object : Creating an instance of the COM component with CLSID {0002DF01-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} from the IClassFactory failed due to the following error: 800704a6.
At line:1 char:17 + $ie = new-object  <<<< -com "InternetExplorer.Application"

This is the exact same code I have been using over and over to run InternetExplorer. Why has it suddenly stopped working and how can I fix it?

Answer 1

Weird, that error message corresponds to this:

A system shutdown has already been scheduled. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800704A6)

Did you update IE or otherwise install something requiring a machine reboot?