Powershell always exiting with exit code 1

I'm having an issue on multiple machines for one customer: when running any PowerShell script, the process always exists with exitcode 1, unless an exitcode is explicitly specified in the script (e.g. exit 0).

• As far as I know, the process should exit with exitcode 0 when the script ran successfully, and when I run this on my own machine, or any server outside of this customer, the exitcode is 0:

  > ver Microsoft Windows [Version 6.3.9600]
  > type test.ps1 Write-Host testing
  > echo %ERRORLEVEL% 0
  > powershell -NoProfile -NonInteractive -NoLogo ./test.ps1 testing
  > echo %ERRORLEVEL% 1

Does anyone know how I can fix this issue?

2 Answers

(Continuing from my comment)

These are two completely separate things:

• > type test.ps1 Write-Host testing
  > echo %ERRORLEVEL% 0

  This is just using Get-Content (if you were in the PowerShell console, not cmd.exe) to display the text in the script:
  • thus command being run here is Get-Content, not your script code
  • unless you are doing this at a cmd prompt, then it's DOS type internal command, not Powershell at all

• > powershell -NoProfile -NonInteractive -NoLogo ./test.ps1 testing
  > echo %ERRORLEVEL% 1

  • This is actually running the script, by calling powershell.exe from cmd.exe, and is not an apples-to-apples comparison, leading you to false results.
  • Executing echo %ERRORLEVEL% in a PS shell is meaningless, as PS has no idea what %ERRORLEVEL% is in that use context; to see the last error, you use the PS system error variables, not CMD.exe/DOS stuff.

The code you posted is you doing all things in cmd.exe, not PowerShell; ver is DOS internal command, not a PowerShell command:

• ver /? Displays the Windows version.

  Get-CimInstance -ClassName CIM_OperatingSystem SystemDirectory Organization BuildNumber RegisteredUser SerialNumber Version --------------- ------------ ----------- -------------- ------------ ------- C:\WINDOWS\system32 19043 Test00 00000-00000-00000-AAOEM 10.0.19043

• Just the version:

  (Get-CimInstance -ClassName CIM_OperatingSystem).Version 10.0.19043

  
  

See also: Returning an exit code from a PowerShell script

After updating to the latest version of powershell, the issue was solved.