Opening PowerShell Script and hide Command Prompt, but not the GUI

Question

I currently open my PowerShell script through a .bat file. The script has a GUI. I tried to put this in my script but it hid the GUI as well and also kept looping because I wanted my GUI to continuously loop:

powershell.exe -WindowStyle Hidden -file c:\script.ps1

How do we run a script without Command Promp, but also not hide the gui? And is that the same if we run the script using a .bat file? Thank you!

Answer 1

If you want to hide the Console behind the GUI I've had success with the following native functions:

# .Net methods for hiding/showing the console in the background
Add-Type -Name Window -Namespace Console -MemberDefinition '
[DllImport("Kernel32.dll")]
public static extern IntPtr GetConsoleWindow();

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
public static extern bool ShowWindow(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 nCmdShow);
'

function Show-Console
{
    $consolePtr = [Console.Window]::GetConsoleWindow()

    # Hide = 0,
    # ShowNormal = 1,
    # ShowMinimized = 2,
    # ShowMaximized = 3,
    # Maximize = 3,
    # ShowNormalNoActivate = 4,
    # Show = 5,
    # Minimize = 6,
    # ShowMinNoActivate = 7,
    # ShowNoActivate = 8,
    # Restore = 9,
    # ShowDefault = 10,
    # ForceMinimized = 11

    [Console.Window]::ShowWindow($consolePtr, 4)
}

function Hide-Console
{
    $consolePtr = [Console.Window]::GetConsoleWindow()
    #0 hide
    [Console.Window]::ShowWindow($consolePtr, 0)
}

Once the above functions have been added to your Form, simply call the Hide-Console function in your Form_Load event:

$OnFormLoad = 
{
    Hide-Console
}

If you need to show the Console, perhaps for debugging, you can easily show the console again by calling the Show-Console function:

$OnButtonClick = 
{
    Show-Console
}

For more information on the numbers you can pass to ShowWindow you can check out the ShowWindow documentation on MSDN here

Update based on comment

Thanks for this code. I tried to use it in my script, but where exactly am I suppose to put Hide-Console? My form load looks like this $objForm.Add_Shown({$objForm.Activate()}) [void] $objForm.ShowDialog()

To hide the console with this code, all you need to do is call Hide-Console. Since you already have code in the Shown event ($objForm.Add_Shown) we can simply add another line to call the command:

Change this:

$objForm.Add_Shown({$objForm.Activate()})

To this:

$objForm.Add_Shown({
    $objForm.Activate()
    Hide-Console
})

When your form is Shown the console will be hidden (You can still call Show-Console if you want to see it later).

Answer 2

If you run PowerShell from a shortcut with the window set to minimized, it will briefly flash a cmd icon in the taskbar but you barely notice it. Yet, it will start your PowerShell GUI without having a console window behind it.

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -windowstyle Hidden -file "C:\path\whatever.ps1"

If you want to start a second GUI console window from whatever.ps1 without it stopping the processing on whatever.ps1 you need to use start-process. However, start-process with -WindowStyle hidden prevents the GUI from showing up. Removing -WindowStyle shows a command window behind your GUI. However, if you start-process with cmd.exe /k, it does work.

$argumentlist = "/c powershell.exe -file `"c:\path\whatever2.ps1`" -param1 `"paramstring`""
Start-Process cmd.exe -WindowStyle Hidden -ArgumentList $argumentlist

As a bonus, if you start whatever2.ps1 with a param() statement, you can pass named, required arguments. Just be sure it's the very first thing in the ps1 file, before assemblies even.

param (
  [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
  [string]$var1
)
$argumentlist = "/c powershell.exe -file `"C:\path\whatever2.ps1`" -param1 `"param1string`""

Answer 3

In the solution proposed posted in a comment (*

Put it in a shortcut instead of in a batch file. Right click a blank spot on desktop or in a folder window, New, Shortcut, paste your line in, Next, name it, Finish

*.) to hide definitely the Command Prompt, I set, in the properties of the shortcut Run=minimized in General.

Answer 4

Simplified the function for show hide a bit

function Show-Console
{
    param ([Switch]$Show,[Switch]$Hide)
    if (-not ("Console.Window" -as [type])) { 

        Add-Type -Name Window -Namespace Console -MemberDefinition '
        [DllImport("Kernel32.dll")]
        public static extern IntPtr GetConsoleWindow();

        [DllImport("user32.dll")]
        public static extern bool ShowWindow(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 nCmdShow);
        '
    }

    if ($Show)
    {
        $consolePtr = [Console.Window]::GetConsoleWindow()

        # Hide = 0,
        # ShowNormal = 1,
        # ShowMinimized = 2,
        # ShowMaximized = 3,
        # Maximize = 3,
        # ShowNormalNoActivate = 4,
        # Show = 5,
        # Minimize = 6,
        # ShowMinNoActivate = 7,
        # ShowNoActivate = 8,
        # Restore = 9,
        # ShowDefault = 10,
        # ForceMinimized = 11

        $null = [Console.Window]::ShowWindow($consolePtr, 5)
    }

    if ($Hide)
    {
        $consolePtr = [Console.Window]::GetConsoleWindow()
        #0 hide
        $null = [Console.Window]::ShowWindow($consolePtr, 0)
    }
}

show-console -show

show-console -hide