PowerShell failing in a ConfigMgr 2012 OSD Task Sequence

PowerShell failing in a ConfigMgr 2012 OSD Task Sequence

Problem

We had a PowerShell script trying to be executed from a Command Line task within our OSD Task Sequence.  This was failing with either running the command manually or calling it from within the package within the OSD Task Sequence.  What was odd and troublesome is if I ran the same commands within its own Custom Task Sequence outside of the OSD Task Sequence it would work.  The error that was seen in the smsts.log file was “The term XXX is not recognized as the name of a cmdlets, function, script file, or operable program.  Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify the path is correct and try again.”  This error was found for almost every PowerShell action that the script was performing.

Resolution

I came across a post by Mike Griswold found here that explained part of the issue.  The issue is that when PowerShell is called within an OSD Task Sequence and within the OS (NOT PE) it does not have any modules loaded like default.  What I had to do was from the OS open PowerShell and run my script.  After the script completed I ran Get-Module from within the same PowerShell window.  This step was important as when running Get-Module by default from a fresh PowerShell window it will not give you all the modules the script referenced. After running Get-Module from within the same PowerShell window after the script ran it gave me the Modules that the script required.  I then modified my PowerShell script that I was using within my SCCM package to include the needed modules.  The specific lines I added to my .PS1 file are listed below.  I added the -verbose so I could see within the SMSTS.log file that the modules were in fact importing correctly.  After this modification everything started working as expected and my sanity returned.

import-module -Name C:\windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\Microsoft.PowerShell.Management -verbose

import-module -Name C:\windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\Microsoft.PowerShell.Security -verbose

import-module -Name C:\windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\Microsoft.PowerShell.Utility -verbose