Windows 7 PowerShell sucking

[MacNilly]

My basic problem is, if I ever had a CD disk into my drive previously, when attempting to launch PowerShell (LOL @ the term "power", compared to my Linux term) it won't even start, claiming "There is no disk in drive D:"



Only solution(s):

1) Insert random music CD into drive D: and play... rock on!
2) Restart computer, then launch. Seems to work OK.

WTF is this nonsense??? Why does PowerShell care what disks are in what drives? This is EXACTLY the kind of B.S. that I hate Windows for!

Ok, to reverse it for you *NIX users, what if.. when you went to open XTerm or whatever, it crashed with a stupid dialog saying "No disk mounted on /media/blahblahblah"... You wouldn't expect that, and I've never seen such a bull........ system on *NIX.

Personally, I think its idiomatic of Microsoft products... that they want to control more than they need to or should ever be designed to. I'm quite sure the XTerm and PowerShell or any command line prompt terminal does not need to depend on my ........ing peripheral storage devices in order to work goddammit!

I think maybe when PowerShell opens, it tries to snoop into every damn part of the system.. for god's knows why... I don't know. Maybe it even checks my web browser (cause it knows which ones are there) for my bookmarks.. maybe it tries to make an internet connection to all my bookmarks whenever I try to open a prompt to the C:\ drive... So now I'm gotta have a CD playing and a ........ing internet connection in order to launch a gimped up version of GCC and GNU make on this craptastic dev platform called Winblows...

[Epy]

[MacNilly]

LOL @ that..

I'm really not upset anymore, as I am not using PowerShell ever again!

EDIT:

I mean, at least not without my favorite CD playing!

[MutantJohn]

Can I go ahead and ask the dumb question, what on God's green Earth does listening to a CD have to do with PowerShell?

[Epy]

Can I go ahead and ask the dumb question, what on God's green Earth does listening to a CD have to do with PowerShell?

That's the point, it doesn't have anything to do with it. I've gotten the same error randomly for various Windows apps, mostly file explorer. Do something completely unrelated, get asked where the CD is.

[MutantJohn]

Oh, that's hilarious XD

Thanks for explaining it. I'll have to try and see if I can get PowerShell to break for me as well

I read the OP and I was like, "what is this even about?"

[Elysia]

I think it's typically caused because Windows remembers the last path you've chosen for some things, so that when you open a open file dialog, it will automatically put you in the path you were last time. It's handy. Unfortunately, if the last path was on a CD, Windows will just prompt you to reinsert the CD.

So my guess is that something in powershell, some component, has a path to your CD somehow, and when you open it, it tries to open or query that path, which prompts windows to ask you to reinsert the CD.

[Salem]

<old joke>
Hey, if I listen to this CD backwards I hear satanic music.
That's nothing man, if you play it forwards it installs windows!
</old joke>

[MutantJohn]

PowerShell actually supports wget! The funny thing is, you need to run and configure Internet Explorer before it can be used though XD

[MacNilly]

I think it's typically caused because Windows remembers the last path you've chosen for some things, so that when you open a open file dialog, it will automatically put you in the path you were last time. It's handy. Unfortunately, if the last path was on a CD, Windows will just prompt you to reinsert the CD.

So my guess is that something in powershell, some component, has a path to your CD somehow, and when you open it, it tries to open or query that path, which prompts windows to ask you to reinsert the CD.

Yeah, I thought so too. I still think this is what's happening, but I did some Googling and checked out the Windows registry settings related to PowerShell for references to any non-logical paths like D:\ or some such. No dice. Also I don't remember ever having used PowerShell to access any drive except C:\... ugh.

[MacNilly]

PowerShell actually supports wget! The funny thing is, you need to run and configure Internet Explorer before it can be used though XD

LOL so... it's hard-coded to use Internet Explorer to make a web-request? Yuck. There is no sane reason to rely on any specific browser to make a web request.. sheesh.

[MutantJohn]

I think it's more or less that they use the same underlying function to make the GET request. Like IE is a GUI on top of the base function set and IE and Invoke-WebRequest both use the same code underneath. It's largely fine. It's a weird thing, for sure. Can't deny that. And it makes sense as IE comes with the OS itself. In MS's defense, it is good code re-use even if it is a leaky abstraction in that one regard.

But let's be real, let's just be happy PowerShell gives us wget in the first place. I'll count my blessings lol.