Tjyylli

I have problem with slow starting of powershell prompt on Windows 10 ( Version 1703 - Creators Update ).

My hw specs ( quite fast machine ): Intel i5-7440HQ (Quad Core) / 32GB DDR4 RAM / 512 Samsung SSD hard drive.

I tried to bypass profile and execution policy but it does not change anything:

powershell -noprofile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass ( Measure-Command { powershell "Write-Host 1" } ).TotalSeconds

6,228067

My friends same laptop with Windows 10 without Creators Update runs powershell in less than 0,5 sec.

Also tried do some compilation with ngen.exe but it didn't help:

$env:path = [Runtime.InteropServices.RuntimeEnvironment]::GetRuntimeDirectory()

[AppDomain]::CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies() | % {

  if (! $_.location) {continue}

  $Name = Split-Path $_.location -leaf

  Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow "NGENing : $Name"

  ngen install $_.location | % {"`t$_"}

}

Any idea how may I investigate this issue?

Greetings

What you could try is create a shortcut to powershell.exe , right-click on it > properties, go to tab options, click on "use legacy console". My screenreader (magic and zoomtext) couldn't stand the 'new' çonsole which came with the fall update (Powershell was veeeerrrrry slow) With legacy on everything works fine again.

This was happening to me also - though maybe not the best route, adding powershell.exe to the list of Windows Defender exclusions sped it up from 20 seconds to < 1 second.

Using legacy console, purging PSReadLine, and running ngen did not seem to help at all.

I had been experiencing the same issue for quite some time until PowerShell started failing on startup with the following error:

Exception:

System.OutOfMemoryException: Array dimensions exceeded supported range.

   at System.Collections.Generic.List`1.set_Capacity(Int32 value)

   at System.Collections.Generic.List`1.EnsureCapacity(Int32 min)

   at System.Collections.Generic.List`1.Add(T item)

   at System.IO.File.InternalReadAllLines(String path, Encoding encoding)

   at Microsoft.PowerShell.PSConsoleReadLine.<ReadHistoryFile>b__67_0()

   at Microsoft.PowerShell.PSConsoleReadLine.WithHistoryFileMutexDo(Int32 timeout, Action action)

   at Microsoft.PowerShell.PSConsoleReadLine.DelayedOneTimeInitialize()

   at Microsoft.PowerShell.PSConsoleReadLine.Initialize(Runspace runspace, EngineIntrinsics engineIntrinsics)

   at Microsoft.PowerShell.PSConsoleReadLine.ReadLine(Runspace runspace, EngineIntrinsics engineIntrinsics)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

This led me to the existing Github issue: https://github.com/lzybkr/PSReadLine/issues/673

I tried deleting history file in ~AppDataRoamingMicrosoftWindowsPowerShellPSReadline which was over 6 GB by then and after that PowerShell console started opening pretty quickly.

Maybe the slowness you experience is the PowerShell trying to read a big history file (which is not yet big enough to cause OutOfMemory).