Powershell: Unable to update PowerShellGet , error: The version '1.4.7' of module 'PackageManagement' is currently in use

Question

Win10 laptop, in service for a couple years.

I have been stuck on this for a couple of days.

I try this command:

Install-Module –Name PowerShellGet –Force -AllowClobber

Which throws this error:

WARNING: The version '1.4.7' of module 'PackageManagement' 
is currently in use. Retry the operation after closing the applications.

I can see in task manager there are no other sessions of powershell running.

I can exit all the sessions, and run this from a plain cmd:

powershell -NoProfile -Command "Install-Module -Name PowerShellGet -Force -AllowClobber"

And I get the SAME error.

OK, so I exit all powershell instances (as seen in Details tab of taskmgr) and do this:

powershell -NoProfile -Command "Uninstall-Module PowerShellGet"
powershell -NoProfile -Command "Install-Module -Name PowerShellGet -Force -AllowClobber"

And I get the same error.

So I do the uninstall again, (which runs without messages or errors). And I take out the big guns... powershell.exe is not running, and I navigate to:

C:\Users\$user\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\PackageManagement\1.4.7

And I delete the 1.4.7 directory.

And the commands above run with the same behavior and same error.

How do I move past this?

Additional Background:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Get-Module -ListAvailable PowerShellGet,PackageManagement


    Directory: C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules


ModuleType Version    Name                                ExportedCommands
---------- -------    ----                                ----------------
Script     1.4.7      PackageManagement                   {Find-Package, Get-Package, Get-PackageProvider, Get-Packa...
Binary     1.0.0.1    PackageManagement                   {Find-Package, Get-Package, Get-PackageProvider, Get-Packa...
Script     2.2.5      PowerShellGet                       {Find-Command, Find-DSCResource, Find-Module, Find-RoleCap...
Script     1.0.0.1    PowerShellGet                       {Install-Module, Find-Module, Save-Module, Update-Module...}


PS C:\WINDOWS\system32>  Get-Module -ListAvailable PowerShellGet,PackageManagement | % path
C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\PackageManagement\1.4.7\PackageManagement.psd1
C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\PackageManagement\1.0.0.1\PackageManagement.psd1
C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\PowerShellGet\2.2.5\PowerShellGet.psd1
C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\PowerShellGet\1.0.0.1\PowerShellGet.psd1

Also Tried

Limiting scope to current user:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Install-Module -Name PowerShellGet -Force -Scope CurrentUser
WARNING: The version '1.4.7' of module 'PackageManagement' is currently in use. Retry the operation after closing the
applications.
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> exit

# OK, check taskmgr that all powershell.exe have exited, and run the below
C:\WINDOWS\system32>powershell -command "Install-Module -Name PowerShellGet -Force -Scope CurrentUser"
WARNING: The version '1.4.7' of module 'PackageManagement' is currently in use. Retry the operation after closing the
applications.

SOLUTION

I did not track exactly the step, but one of the comments below led to a path that did resolve.

One of the tricks was to watch the process list, and to be sure that all vscode and other powershell-loading process were terminated prior to doing the update.

Apologies I cannot document the exact step that resolved. (I was kind of toast working on this.)

Answer 1

I was able to fix this by running the command below in an admin PowerShell:

Update-Module -Name PowerShellGet -RequiredVersion 2.2.5

Hope this helps others!
Source: https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShellGetv2/issues/599