Obtaining ExitCode using Start-Process and WaitForExit instead of -Wait

Question

I m trying to run a program from PowerShell  wait for the exit  then get access to the ExitCode  but I am not having much luck  I don t want to use -Wait with Start-Process  as I need some processing to carry on in the background   Here s a simplified test script   cd  C  Windows     ExitCode is available when using -Wait    Write-Host  Starting Notepad with -Wait - return code will be available   process    Start-Process -FilePath  notepad exe  -PassThru -Wait  Write-Host  Process finished with return code     process ExitCode    ExitCode is not available when waiting separately Write-Host  Starting Notepad without -Wait - return code will NOT be available   process    Start-Process -FilePath  notepad exe  -PassThru   process WaitForExit   Write-Host  Process exit code should be here     process ExitCode   Running this script will cause Notepad to be started   After this is closed manually  the exit code will be printed  and it will start again  without using -wait  No ExitCode is provided when this is quit   Starting Notepad with -Wait - return code will be available Process finished with return code   0 Starting Notepad without -Wait - return code will NOT be available Process exit code should be here    I need to be able to perform additional processing between starting the program and waiting for it to quit  so I can t make use of -Wait  How can I do this and still have access to the  ExitCode property from this process

User · Accepted Answer

Two things you could do I think      Create the System Diagnostics Process object manually and bypass Start-Process Run the executable in a background job  only for non-interactive processes     Here s how you could do either     pinfo   New-Object System Diagnostics ProcessStartInfo  pinfo FileName    notepad exe   pinfo RedirectStandardError    true  pinfo RedirectStandardOutput    true  pinfo UseShellExecute    false  pinfo Arguments       p   New-Object System Diagnostics Process  p StartInfo    pinfo  p Start     Out-Null  Do Other Stuff Here      p WaitForExit    p ExitCode   OR  Start-Job -Name DoSomething -ScriptBlock        amp  ping exe somehost     Write-Output  LASTEXITCODE    Do other stuff here Get-Job -Name DoSomething   Wait-Job   Receive-Job

User · Answer

The  -Wait  option seemed to block for me even though my process had finished   I tried Adrian s solution and it works  But I used Wait-Process instead of relying on a side effect of retrieving the process handle   So    proc   Start-Process  msbuild -PassThru Wait-Process -InputObject  proc  if   proc ExitCode -ne 0        Write-Warning     exited with status code    proc ExitCode

User · Answer

There are two things to remember here  One is to add the -PassThru argument and two is to add the -Wait argument  You need to add the wait argument because of this defect  http   connect microsoft com PowerShell feedback details 520554 start-process-does-not-return-exitcode-property  -PassThru   lt SwitchParameter gt       Returns a process object for each process that the cmdlet started  By d     efault  this cmdlet does not generate any output    Once you do this a process object is passed back and you can look at the ExitCode property of that object  Here is an example    process   start-process ping exe -windowstyle Hidden -ArgumentList  -n 1 -w 127 0 0 1  -PassThru -Wait  process ExitCode    This will print 1   If you run it without -PassThru or -Wait  it will print out nothing   The same answer is here  How do I run a Windows installer and get a succeed fail value in PowerShell

User · Answer

While trying out the final suggestion above  I discovered an even simpler solution  All I had to do was cache the process handle  As soon as I did that   process ExitCode worked correctly  If I didn t cache the process handle   process ExitCode was null   example    proc   Start-Process  msbuild -PassThru  handle    proc Handle   cache proc Handle  proc WaitForExit     if   proc ExitCode -ne 0        Write-Warning     exited with status code    proc ExitCode

User · Answer

Or try adding this      code       DllImport  kernel32 dll    public static extern int GetExitCodeProcess IntPtr hProcess  out Int32 exitcode       type   Add-Type -MemberDefinition  code -Name  Win32  -Namespace Win32 -PassThru  Int32  exitCode   0  type  GetExitCodeProcess  process Handle   ref  exitCode    By using this code  you can still let PowerShell take care of managing redirected output error streams  which you cannot do using System Diagnostics Process Start   directly

User · Answer

Here s a variation on this theme   I want to uninstall Cisco Amp  wait  and get the exit code   But the uninstall program starts a second program called  un a  and exits   With this code  I can wait for un a to finish and get the exit code of it  which is 3010 for  needs reboot    This is actually inside a  bat file   If you ve ever wanted to uninstall folding home  it works in a similar way   rem uninstall cisco amp  probably needs a reboot after  rem runs Un A exe and exits  rem start  wait isn t useful  c  program files Cisco AMP 6 2 19 uninstall exe   S  powershell while      proc   get-process Un A -ea 0     sleep 1     handle    proc handle   waiting   wait-process Un A  exit  proc exitcode

[powershell] Obtaining ExitCode using Start-Process and WaitForExit instead of -Wait

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