PowerShell Missing About_ Help Topics After Running Update-Help

PowerShell Help
1

Hello All,

I am running PowerShell in Windows 10. Today I wanted to check something in the About_If help topic. I was surprised when I ran “Get-Help About_If” and nothing came up. Then I tried “Get-Help About_Modules” and still nothing. This is a pretty new re-installation of Windows 10, so I thought maybe I had forgotten to update the help in PowerShell after the install. I updated the help, and after it completed, I ran “Get-Help About_” and to my shock, only a small handful of topics were listed and still no About_if or About_Modules. Check it out:

Any ideas what my problem might be?

Thanks,
Jon (Riddickulus)

2

Did you install the Windows 10 anniversary update? Microsoft updated my machine this week and last night I noticed most of my about_ files had disappeared.

PS E:\__Temp> Get-Help about_*

Name                              Category  Module                    Synopsis
----                              --------  ------                    --------
about_BeforeEach_AfterEach        HelpFile                            performed at the beginning and en
about_Mocking                     HelpFile                            Pester provides a set of Mocking
about_Pester                      HelpFile                            Pester is a BDD based test runner
about_should                      HelpFile                            Provides assertion convenience me
about_TestDrive                   HelpFile                            A PSDrive for file activity limit
about_CimSession                  HelpFile                            Describes a CimSession object and

PS E:\__Temp>
3

I am seeing the same issue is there a known fix for this issue?

This is all I get when I run the command

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> help ABOUT_*

Name Category Module Synopsis

about_BeforeEach_AfterEach HelpFile performed at the beginning and end of every It…
about_Mocking HelpFile Pester provides a set of Mocking functions mak…
about_Pester HelpFile Pester is a BDD based test runner for PowerShell.
about_should HelpFile Provides assertion convenience methods for com…
about_TestDrive HelpFile A PSDrive for file activity limited to the sco…
about_CimSession HelpFile Describes a CimSession object and the differen…

4

I didn’t find a proper fix. In the end I just copied the files from another machine:
C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\en-US

5

Me too - I have excat the same problem.

I dont have machine where I could copy the files from. Anyone knows where to download theese a a quick fix ?

6

I found a good solution.

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

That installs all the missing helpfiles :slight_smile: Thanks to Powershellgallery and Ryan Yates

https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/Install-AboutHelp/0.0.1/DisplayScript

7

June has opened an issue. Update-Help doesn’t install core About topics