Windows update breaks PowerShell functionality

Microsoft has warned users that its most recent update for Windows 10 disables a pair of features in its recently open-sourced PowerShell tool.

Released earlier this week, the Windows Client KB3176934 update has broken both the Desired State Configuration (DSC) and implicit remoting functionality of the PowerShell command line interface and scripting platform. While embarrassing at the best of times, the gaffe comes less than a week after Microsoft open-sourced PowerShell and released cross-platform binary builds in an effort to convince sysadmin, devops and the like to switch from rival scripting platforms to its in-house creation.

The loss of implicit remoting is likely to be particularly hard-hitting for businesses: during implicit remoting operation, PowerShell commands are executed on a remote target computer rather than the local host; following the installation of the update, this will fail with an error - though thankfully without silently executing the commands locally instead.

For now, the only workaround to restore full PowerShell functionality on Windows is to uninstall the KB3176934 update. The team behind the software stated that fixes for both issues are ready to be deployed, and will be released publicly on August 30.