Powershell ISE Crashes on Launch

5
votes

Not sure why, but today my workstation refuses to load the Powershell ISE. I can load Powershell just fine and my cmdlets work. I've tried loading both the 32bit and 64bit ISEs and both crash for the same reason.

This is the crashdump:

Problem signature: Problem Event Name: PowerShell NameOfExe: PowerShell_ISE.exe FileVersionOfSystemManagementAutomation: 6.1.7600.16385 InnermostExceptionType: System.Xml.XmlException OutermostExceptionType: System.Reflection.TargetInvocation
DeepestPowerShellFrame: indows.PowerShell.GuiExe.Internal.GPowerShell.Main DeepestFrame: indows.PowerShell.GuiExe.Internal.GPowerShell.Main ThreadName: unknown OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.48 Locale ID: 1033

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I couldn't find anything on google on this crash so I'm hoping someone here has some guidance.

1
powershellwindows-7crashpowershell-ise
I would start with checking .config file. Please check if you have C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell_ise.exe.config, and if it exists - try to move/ rename it, and run ISE again. – BartekB
I checked out that directory (and thank you for posting) and I do not have a .config file there. – Colyn1337
If you're using PS 3 can you try running PowerShell_Ise -NoProfile? If not then try temporally moving your \$home\documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1 somewhere else. If the ISE comes up then there's likely something in your profile conflicting with the ISE. – Dustin Venegas
Could be an issue with your .NET installation...why not try adding the powershell_ise.exe.config file to force a certain CLR version like so: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true"> <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" /> </startup> </configuration> – cjones26
Is it group policy? – D3vtr0n

1 Answers

4
votes

This may be completely unrelated but in my case, I didn't understand much when I looked through Process Monitor to determine what was causing the crash as a windows update (cherry picked by our Helpdesk team), broke my PowerShell ISE launch, I also tried running without a profile. with Powershell_ISE -NoProfile

I followed the techcommunity thread and was able to fix my issue with Solution #3 GlobalUserInterface.CompositeFont from dotnet github issue

All I had to do was download this font and update it at below locations, PowerShell ISE is a WPF Application and Fonts were corrupted by dotnet upgrade as a part of KB4074906

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\WPF\Fonts and C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\WPF\Fonts