Get-Help *operators* and about_Arithmetic_Operators

PowerShell Help
1

Hello,

Recently was watching a beginners course on how to use Powershell and I ran into a bump.

When the tutorial said to type in:

Get-Help operators

My console returned this:

Name                              Category  Module                    Synopsis
----                              --------  ------                    --------
Get-Help                          Cmdlet    Microsoft.PowerShell.Core Displays information about Windows PowerShell ...
New-PSSessionConfigurationFile    Cmdlet    Microsoft.PowerShell.Core Creates a file that defines a session configur...
Where-Object                      Cmdlet    Microsoft.PowerShell.Core Selects objects from a collection based on the...
Rename-Item                       Cmdlet    Microsoft.PowerShell.M... Renames an item in a Windows PowerShell provid...
Update-TypeData                   Cmdlet    Microsoft.PowerShell.U... Updates the extended type data in the session.

When the tutorial video said it should list items like about_Arithmetic_Operators or about_Assignment_Operators.
And when I type Get-Help about_Arithmetic_Operators. This happens even though I have recently updated the help:

get-help : Get-Help could not find about_Arithmetic_Operators in a help file in this session. To download updated help
topics type: "Update-Help". To get help online, search for the help topic in the TechNet library at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=107116.
At line:1 char:1
+ get-help about_Arithmetic_Operators
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : ResourceUnavailable: (:) [Get-Help], HelpNotFoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : HelpNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetHelpCommand
2

for the first one you should get:
PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-Help operators

Name Category Module Synopsis

about_Arithmetic_Operators HelpFile Describes the operators that perform arithmetic in Windows PowerShell.
about_Assignment_Operators HelpFile Describes how to use operators to assign values to variables.
about_Comparison_Operators HelpFile Describes the operators that compare values in Windows PowerShell.
about_Logical_Operators HelpFile Describes the operators that connect statements in Windows PowerShell.
about_Operators HelpFile Describes the operators that are supported by Windows PowerShell.
about_Type_Operators HelpFile Describes the operators that work with Microsoft .NET Framework types.

The second one failed because it cannot find what help is looking for. When you run help do you get any errors.

3

What happens if you run get-help about_*?

On clean installs of Windows 10 it appears that most of the about_ help files are missing. Earlier thread on this subject.

4

Hello Matt,

When I run:

PS C:\> get-help about_*

I get nothing.

5

I did the following and it worked:

Install-Script -Name Install-AboutHelp 
Install-AboutHelp.ps1

Thanks for the Link!

6

I’m surprised you don’t get a few results. Was this a fresh installation of Windows 10?

If this is Windows 10 use the solution provided in that thread by Andreas Lorensen.