Simple question concerning PowerShell

DRavisher

Senior member
Aug 3, 2005
202
0
0
Hello all.

I've been trying to learn PowerShell, and the help docs and the get-help command has been very helpful, but I can't seem to figure out how to launch an external application (specific example here is 7-Zip). Know that I have not got any experience in any text-based shell what so ever (I have started cmd.exe a few times in my life), so the answer may be really simple here for anyone familiar with bash, cmd.exe or DOS-prompts.

7-Zip has a command line exe called 7z.exe. I want to extract a file, and the parameter for this seems to be "e c:\whereever.zip". I've been trying lots of different things, for instance:

PS C:\program files (x86)\7-Zip> invoke-item 7z.exe e test.part01.rar

This gives the error:

Invoke-Item : A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name 'e'.

So it seems PS is looking for a parameter for invoke-item called e, which is what I would expect anyway.

Anyone know how this is done? I also want to get the exit-code which tells me if everything was ok or not, so if anyone has any pointers on that it would help.

Also a different questin: I am running Folding@Home, and it seems F@H steals all the CPU time from PowerShell (F@H run as service, set to idle in config). The result of this is that some commands run really slow in PowerShell, and starting PS takes maybe a minute or so. Any ideas how this can be fixed? PS is listed as having "normal" process priority in task manager.

Thanks for any help :)