How to execute several cmdlets in powershell script?

Question

I have written this script to get some information about my Virtual Machine. When I execute this script the last two cmdlets (lines) don't execute, but when I execute them alone they run properly.

Get-CimInstance Win32_LogicalDisk -Filter "DriveType=3" | Select-Object DeviceID, SystemName, 
@{n='Size (GB)'; e={$_.Size / 1GB -as [int]}}, 
@{n='Freespace (GB)'; e={$_.Freespace / 1GB -as [int]}};
$TotalMemory = (Get-CimInstance Win32_OperatingSystem).TotalVisibleMemorySize / (1024*1024)
$UsedMemory = (Get-CimInstance Win32_OperatingSystem).FreePhysicalMemory / (1024*1024)
$TotalMemory = [math]::Round($TotalMemory,2)
$UsedMemory = [math]::Round($UsedMemory,2)
$TotalMemory
$UsedMemory
Get-CimInstance Win32_Processor | Select-Object -Property NumberOfCores;
Get-CimInstance Win32_Processor | Measure-Object -Property LoadPercentage -Sum | Select-Object Sum;

What is the problem? Any comments would be appreciated.

Answer 1

This question has been asked a million times. Format-table is being implicitly run, and it doesn't handle different sets of columns well. All the objects are there. You can pipe the whole script to format-list. You can put get-date at the very beginning. A known object with a format file at the beginning fixes it. You can output more than 4 properties with the first object. I tried to ask for a warning to be added a while ago: format-table should at least warn when it doesn't display properties #7871

Looks like out-gridview has similar struggles: Not all properties displayed

Answer 2

This appears to be one of PowerShell's weird quirks. I am not sure why it happens, but if someone else does I will happily edit my answer to include it.

You will need to specifically tell it to write the output to the console. There are a couple ways of doing this.

The first, and probably messiest, would be to pass it as a parameter to Write-Host or Write-Output .

Write-Host (Get-CimInstance Win32_Processor | Select-Object -Property NumberOfCores)
Write-Host (Get-CimInstance Win32_Processor | Measure-Object -Property LoadPercentage -Sum | Select-Object Sum)

(Another way of doing this would be to assign them both to variables, and pass the variables to the cmdlet)

The second way would be to pipe it to Write-Host or Write-Output

Get-CimInstance Win32_Processor | Select-Object -Property NumberOfCores | Write-Host
Get-CimInstance Win32_Processor | Measure-Object -Property LoadPercentage -Sum | Select-Object Sum | Write-Host

And finally, the third (and in my opinion cleanest) way would be to pipe it to a code block that references the property directly

Get-CimInstance Win32_Processor | %{$_.NumberOfCores}
Get-CimInstance Win32_Processor | Measure-Object -Property LoadPercentage -Sum | %{$_.Sum}

Hope this helps!