“The execution of scripts is disabled on this system” … How to run your own PowerShell scripts

So you’re picking up PowerShell scripting, are you?
As a first test, you create a little, never fail “hello world” script and launch it from within a PowerShell, but instead of seeing “Hello World” you see this:
File C:\scripts\test.ps1 cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. Please see "get-
help about_signing" for more details.
At line:1 char:19
+ c:\scripts\test.ps1 <<<<

What the hell?? Yep, that’s right: by default only digitally signed scripts can be run from within PowerShell. Luckily, this can be remedied fairly easily.

If you launch the command Get-ExecutionPolicy you will see that the default policy is set to Restricted, basically creating your problem.

Now we can change that value to 5 different settings:
1. Restricted: no scripts will be executed
2. Unrestricted: all scripts will be executed
3. RemoteSigned: all scripts you created yourself will be run, all scripts downloaded from the internet will need to be signed by a trusted publisher
4. AllSigned: all scripts, including your own, will need to be signed by a trusted publisher
5. Default: = Restricted (unless you change the default value to something else)

OK, so now that we know that we can change the policy by simply typing Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned.

And that’s it! Your scripts can be run. I’ll be posting soon about how to set up your own “trusted publisher” so that we can secure our PowerShell environment as much as possible.

Have fun!