PowerShell 1.0 Start-Process not waiting for complete when user logged off

Question

I'm currently trying to use Powershell to connect to a remote desktop, run a program on that desktop, and then log off. I am then checking the output of running that command across a fileshare. Basically this means that PowerShell should wait for the process to complete before continuing.

After reading up, I've been trying to use the Start-Process -Wait option to make sure that it waits for the process to run. However, this script must be run as a scheduled task, and it seems that whenever the script is run when the user is not logged in, the -wait does not work and the script continues on without the process completing. I've tried several different options for waiting, but obviously I have to run the scheduled task while the user is logged off to test it, and testing gets exhausting. Here is my current line of code executing this:

$proc = $(start-process $path -Wait)

Note that I've tried using the -NoNewWindow command, but it is not available on my verison of PowerShell.

Anyone have any other ideas for how to make it wait for the process?

Answer 1

You still have the .net way of starting a process and waiting for his death. Have a look to the Process class, methods and properties.

## Start a process
$Proc = [Diagnostics.Process]::Start("calc.exe")

## Start a processus with param
$Proc = [Diagnostics.Process]::Start("notepad.exe", "Fic.txt")

## Wait for a process death
$Proc.WaitForExit()

You can also configure the starting environment

$credential = Get-Credential
$startInfo = New-Object Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
$startInfo.UserName = $credential.Username
$startInfo.Password = $credential.Password
$startInfo.Filename = "powershell"

## Start a process with StartInfo 
$startInfo.UseShellExecute = $false
$Proc = [Diagnostics.Process]::Start($startInfo)

## Stop the process
$Proc.Kill()