Charlie Russel's Blog

Most system administrators routinely start a command line window of some sort when they log onto a computer. For me, obviously, that’s a PowerShell window. Actually, two PowerShell windows – one as a limited user, the other as an administrator, but that trick is for a different blog post. For this one, I’ll show you how to have Windows automatically start a PowerShell windows whenever you long on to your computer.

The key to this is the Run key in the registry. Specifically HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. Programs listed in this key automatically start when the user (HKCU) logs on to the computer. So, all we need to do is insert a new value into the key for PowerShell. Easy enough, with New-ItemProperty. Here’s a function to do that:

Function Set-myPowerShellStart () {
   if (Get-ItemProperty HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run `
                        -Name "*PowerShell" 2>$NULL ) {
      write-verbose "Already an entry for starting PowerShell"
   } else {
      New-ItemProperty HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run `
                       -Name  "Windows PowerShell" `
                       -Value "C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\PowerShell.exe"
      write-verbose "Added value for automatic PowerShell start"
   }
}

Now, all you need to do is call that function, and it will insert a key in the registry, and the next time you log on to the computer, you’ll automatically have a PowerShell window open and ready to go.