Invoke-Command + Get-ChildItem = Output?

PowerShell Help
1

Hello!

I have a script that used Start-Job to start Get-ChildItem script. For reasons that are too long to get into, I wanted to try this methodology with Invoke-Command instead!

The command looks like this:

$a = Invoke-Command -AsJob -ComputerName $env:computername -ScriptBlock {
Get-ChildItem -Path C:\ *.exe }
echo $a

However, instead of $a containing the output for the Get-Childitem command ( a list of executables), it instead contains the output for the job!

Id Name PSJobTypeName State HasMoreData Location Command
-- ---- ------------- ----- ----------- -------- -------
15 Job15 RemoteJob Running True WIN-GNNG6UDHR6J ...

What am I doing wrong?
I have attempted to use Receive-Job but have had no success yet. This is the error I get when I try to receive-job

Connecting to remote server WIN-GNNG6UDHR6J failed with the following error message : Access is denied. For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic.
+ CategoryInfo : OpenError: (WIN-GNNG6UDHR6J:String) [], PSRemotingTransportException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : AccessDenied,PSSessionStateBroken

Thanks ahead of time!

2

If you want the output of the remote command to be stored in $a, don’t use the -AsJob switch. If you continue to use a job, then once $a shows a State other than Running, you can use $a | Receive-Job for the output. Access denied errors could be a number of things. I’d make sure the account running Invoke-Command has access to perform the remote command as if it were running the command locally on the target system. Admin elevation may be required in the shell as well.

3

Here’s an example. In powershell 7 it comes out blank though, lol. For this example, the prompt has to be elevated.

invoke-command localhost -asjob { dir } | receive-job -wait -AutoRemoveJob