I’m working with PowerShell, and digging it. I decided that I wanted to create a new script (blog post later, if I get it to work) and I wanted to try out different scripting tools to build it. I started with PrimalScript from Sapien. It’s slick. It’s powerful. It has very nice code completion, a great GUI, integration with source control out of the box.

I started scripting and everything was fine. Then, I needed to run invoke-Sqlcmd so I decided to change the profile on the shell so it would load the SQL Server cmdlets automagically. I started getting the error:

Get-ItemProperty : Cannot find path ‘HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.PowerShell.sqlps’ because it does not exist

Hmmm… weird. I’m pretty sure I used the same command on my workstation as on my laptop. So I checked it out. Sure enough, same command. So I navigated through the path to ensure everything was in place. I opened up a seperate shell on the laptop and on the workstation. They both showed the path just fine. I couldn’t figure it out. So I opened up the registry and browsed through directly. Yep, the path was there. I opened a shell directly from PrimalScript. I got the error again. Then I tried to navigate to my path. No love. Why?

Then I noticed, in the path in the window that opened from PrimalScript, two little numbers, 32. It’s running the 32 bit shell. Funny enough, the install of SQL Server is 64 bit. It’s visible to the 64 bit shell, the one I ran, but it’s not there to the 32 bit shell. Now I get to track down how to configure SQL Server cmdlets to be visible to both the 32 and the 64 bit shell. Fun.

Idera’s PowerShell Plus has a 64-bit version. I’m just trying to get Quest’s PowerGUI installed, but it looks like it’s 32-bit. This is something to keep an eye out for when choosing and configuring your editor.