Install PowerCLI 5.1 in Windows 8

I don’t believe that PowerCLI 5.1 is yet officially supported on Windows 8, however that’s where I wanted to run it. While carrying out the installation I hit this issue, i.e. .NET Framework 2.0 was not installed as a pre-requisite. This is because PowerShell 3.0 on Windows 8 uses .NET 4 and no longer has .NET 2.0 as a requirement.

 

To install .NET Framework 2.0 in Windows 8 you need to turn on .NET Framework 3.5 as an optional feature, this will include .NET Framework 2.0. You can view the current status of this feature with PowerShell (note: the Online parameter means ’take the action on the OS currently running on the local computer’):

Get-WindowsOptionalFeature -FeatureName netfx3 -Online

 

To enable .NET Framework 3.5, 3.0 and 2.0 run:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -FeatureName netfx3 -source D:\\sources\\sxs -Online

where source is the location of the Windows 8 media.

 

The state of this optional feature has been updated:

Get-WindowsOptionalFeature -FeatureName netfx3 -Online

You can now complete the PowerCLI install.

It is now possible to take advantage of some the cool features in PowerShell 3.0, such as intellisense in the ISE console which includes the installed PowerCLI cmdlets: