As you may already know, as of Powershell version 3.0, you get a prompt to update help files the first time you invoke the Get-Help cmdlet.
You can read about it in the Remark section of the Get-Help cmdlet.
Get-Help Get-Help -Full
As I was doing a lab last week, I tried to use Get-help inside a virtual machine without realizing that it was the VM and not the host. D’oh!
I answered No as I realized that the VM wasn’t wasn’t connected to the internet. 😦
Now, instead of using the Update-Help, how do I restore that first prompt.
As you can see in the above screenshot, PowerShell writes a REG_DWORD value in the above registry locations.
Removing the two values makes it:
gp HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PowerShell | rp -Name "DisablePromptToUpdateHelp" gp HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\PowerShell | rp -Name "DisablePromptToUpdateHelp"
Here’s another way (with error handling) to perform the removal of the 2 registry values:
$null,"Wow6432Node" | ForEach-Object { try { Remove-ItemProperty -Name "DisablePromptToUpdateHelp" -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\$($_)\Microsoft\PowerShell" -ErrorAction Stop } catch { Write-Warning -Message "Failed because $($_.Exception.Message)" } }