How to run a PowerShell script without displaying

Question

How is it possible to run a PowerShell script without displaying a window or any other sign to the user?

In other words, the script should run quietly in the background without any sign to the user.

Extra credit for an answer that does not use third party components :)

Answer 1

I think that the best way to hide the console screen of the PowerShell when your are running a background scripts is this code ("Bluecakes" answer).

I add this code in the beginning of all my PowerShell scripts that I need to run in background.

# .Net methods for hiding/showing the console in the background
Add-Type -Name Window -Namespace Console -MemberDefinition '
[DllImport("Kernel32.dll")]
public static extern IntPtr GetConsoleWindow();

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
public static extern bool ShowWindow(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 nCmdShow);
'
function Hide-Console
{
    $consolePtr = [Console.Window]::GetConsoleWindow()
    #0 hide
    [Console.Window]::ShowWindow($consolePtr, 0)
}
Hide-Console

If this answer was help you, please vote to "Bluecakes" in his answer in this post.

Answer 2

You can either run it like this (but this shows a windows for a while):

PowerShell.exe -windowstyle hidden { your script.. }

Or you use a helper file I created to avoid the window called PsRun.exe that does exactly that. You can download source and exe file Run scheduled tasks with WinForm GUI in PowerShell. I use it for scheduled tasks.

Edited: as Marco noted this -windowstyle parameter is available only for V2.

Answer 3

Here's an approach that that doesn't require command line args or a separate launcher. It's not completely invisible because a window does show momentarily at startup. But it then quickly vanishes. Where that's OK, this is, I think, the easiest approach if you want to launch your script by double-clicking in explorer, or via a Start menu shortcut (including, of course the Startup submenu). And I like that it's part of the code of the script itself, not something external.

Put this at the front of your script:

$t = '[DllImport("user32.dll")] public static extern bool ShowWindow(int handle, int state);'
add-type -name win -member $t -namespace native
[native.win]::ShowWindow(([System.Diagnostics.Process]::GetCurrentProcess() | Get-Process).MainWindowHandle, 0)

Answer 4

You can use the PowerShell Community Extensions and do this:

start-process PowerShell.exe -arg $pwd\foo.ps1 -WindowStyle Hidden

You can also do this with VBScript: http://blog.sapien.com/index.php/2006/12/26/more-fun-with-scheduled-powershell/

• Schedule Hidden PowerShell Tasks (Internet Archive)

• More fun with scheduled PowerShell (Internet Archive)

(Via this forum thread.)

Answer 5

Here's a one-liner:

mshta vbscript:Execute("CreateObject(""Wscript.Shell"").Run ""powershell -NoLogo -Command """"& 'C:\Example Path That Has Spaces\My Script.ps1'"""""", 0 : window.close")

Although it's possible for this to flash a window very briefly, that should be a rare occurrence.

Answer 6

I was having this problem when running from c#, on Windows 7, the "Interactive Services Detection" service was popping up when running a hidden powershell window as the SYSTEM account.

Using the "CreateNoWindow" parameter prevented the ISD service popping up it's warning.

process.StartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo("powershell.exe",
    String.Format(@" -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy unrestricted -encodedCommand ""{0}""",encodedCommand))
{
   WorkingDirectory = executablePath,
   UseShellExecute = false,
   CreateNoWindow = true
};