Powershell Start-Process Command Tutorial with Examples – POFTUT

Powershell Start-Process Command Tutorial with Examples

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Start-Process is a powershell commandlet used create new process. As powershell is mainly developed .Net and provides .Net feature Start-Process is equivalent of System.Diagnostics.Process method.

Start A Process

The most basic usage of the Start-Process is start a process by giving its name. Start-Process inherits current working environment variables and can find given executable if its in Path environment. In this example we will start notepad.exe by specifying a filename names.txt

PS> Start-Process notepad.exe names.txt

Run Batch File

We can specify a script file or batch file to run in Powershell. We will use -filepath option with the full path and name of batch file. In this example we run batch file backup.cmd .

PS> Start-Process -filepath C:\backup.cmd

Run With Elevated Admin Privileges

While running and creating new processes with Start-Process the current user privilege will be get. This may not work some situations. We can elevate privileges to the Administrator with -verb runas . In this example we will run cmd.exe with Administrator privileges.

PS> Start-Process -verb runas cmd.exe

Set Working Directory

While working with Start-Process by default current working directory will be current working directory. Setting working directory of given process can be changed with -workingdirectory option. This is useful if we need to change executable file path. In this example we will change to the C:\Windows to the working directory. Providing directories in double quotes will make this less error prone.

PS> Start-Process -workingdirectory "C:\Windows" cmd.exe

Use Print Verb

We can also use Start-Process without providing any executable file. We can use print verb to print text files. We will use -verb Print for this. In this example we will print the file named names.txt

PS> Start-Process names.txt -verb Print

Set WindowStyle

While starting the new process it will open new windows in default size. We can change this window size on startup. We can use -windowstyle option. This option can get following values

  • Maximized
  • Minimized
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In this example we will open notepad.exe in maximized window.

PS> Start-Process notepad.exe -windowstyle Maximized

Redirect Standard Input

Commands and executables running in a shell will have some standard input. Standard input provided data will be fed into command or executable. We can use -RedirectStandardInput option with the file which contains data to be fed into executable. In this example we will put data in mydata.txt into notepad.exe .

PS> Start-Process notepad.exe -RedirectStandardInput mydata.txt

Redirect Standard Input

As done in previous example we can redirect standard output into given file. We will use -RedirectStandardOuput with a file name. In this example we will redirect into file named notepad.log .

PS> Start-Process notepad.exe -RedirectStandardOutput notepad.log

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