Installing Windows PowerHell

As every child knows, the command prompt Windows provides is a total piece of crap. cmd.exe is to Bash as MS Paint is to Gimp.

But I had heard that Microsoft has another shell to offer: Windows PowerShell. The name itself sounded promising and so I decided to give it a try. But you know... I was stunk in Windows.

Downloading from Microsoft.com

I read a bit of the Wikipedia entry about PowerShell and from there went to the PowerShell homepage.

I clicked on the download link and was presented with a page explaining How to Download Windows PowerShell 1.0. (Although the text on this page didn't really explain anything and sounded more like some marketing gibberish.) I decided that although I have no idea what RTW means, Windows PowerShell 1.0 RTW is probably the version that I need. I chose x86 and English language Package for Windows XP.

On the next page I was informed that the download requires validation that Microsoft has received money for my Windows installation. They really wanted to make the process painful... after all I was running Windows XP (eXtra Painful).

I downloaded GenuineCheck.exe. Ran it. Copied the generated code to the web page. Submitted it. And was finally able to click the download button.

After I had ignored the advice of installer to close all my programs and back up my system, the PowerShell was in my machine.

We'll See What Happens

So now I'm going to use this shell for a while and we shall see what kind of surprises it will bring to our table.