Duplicate about files

PowerShell Help
1

Hi,
I’m having a strange issue here , i have multiple about_ files duplicated when i ask for 

help about_*
, for example about_Sequence , so if i do ‘help about_Sequence’ , it returns

PS C:\> help about_Sequence

Name                              Category  Module                    Synopsis
----                              --------  ------                    --------
about_Sequence                    HelpFile                            Describes the Sequence keyword, which runs selected
about_Sequence                    HelpFile                            Describes the Sequence keyword, which runs selected

I searched the windows drive , but i can only find one file in C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\en-US , so why does it return two records and how can i fix it ?

2

We’ve had a half-dozen or so posts like this. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how it gets that way.

3

Can you take a look at the module path and see if you have any duplicates in the list?
$env:psmodulepath.split(‘;’)

4

Seems like it has something to do with
C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\en-US
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\en-US

on 64bit systems , but strangely if i rename the file in C:\Windows\SysWOW64\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\en-US , it still shows the output like above , if i do the same with the file in C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\en-US , then the output is as expected so … something strange is happening here.
I don’t have duplicate modules , the only issue is with the about_ files , not cmdlets

Not sure it’s what i said above , both dirs contain the same files , so why would one act out and not the other ? :slight_smile:

5

Managed to finally reproduce this one from scratch. Looks like you hit this in x64 Windows PowerShell after running Update-Help from within an x86 instance of Windows PowerShell and from within an x64 Windows PowerShell.

Workaround for now is to delete the about_*.txt files in SysWOW64.

We’ve already fixed this problem in PowerShell Core 6.0 (as a consequence of some other bugs), but depending on how widespread this problem is, we can investigate servicing Windows PowerShell.

6

Thanks Joey , but doesn’t fix it for me , see linked print screen

I rebooted the PC just to be sure, no joy.
For me the issue was C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\PSWorkflow\en-US , which contains these files

Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
-a----         8/9/2015  10:46 AM          29397 about_ActivityCommonParameters.help.txt
-a----        9/30/2016   3:24 PM          25897 about_ActivityCommonParameters.txt
-a----         8/9/2015  10:46 AM           3221 about_Checkpoint-Workflow.help.txt
-a----        9/30/2016   3:24 PM           3128 about_Checkpoint-Workflow.txt
-a----         8/9/2015  10:46 AM           3199 about_Foreach-Parallel.help.txt
-a----        9/30/2016   3:24 PM           3112 about_Foreach-Parallel.txt
-a----         8/9/2015  10:46 AM           4655 about_InlineScript.help.txt
-a----        9/30/2016   3:24 PM           4123 about_InlineScript.txt
-a----         8/9/2015  10:46 AM           1706 about_Parallel.help.txt
-a----        9/30/2016   3:24 PM           1691 about_Parallel.txt
-a----         8/9/2015  10:46 AM           3315 about_Sequence.help.txt
-a----        9/30/2016   3:24 PM           2833 about_Sequence.txt
-a----         8/9/2015  10:46 AM           4464 about_Suspend-Workflow.help.txt
-a----        9/30/2016   3:24 PM           4031 about_Suspend-Workflow.txt
-a----         8/9/2015  10:46 AM          16432 about_WorkflowCommonParameters.help.txt
-a----        9/30/2016   3:24 PM          15250 about_WorkflowCommonParameters.txt
-a----         8/9/2015  10:46 AM          12046 about_Workflows.help.txt
-a----        9/30/2016   3:24 PM          10889 about_Workflows.txt