Long Running Powershell Script Freezes

Question

We are using a long running PowerShell script to perform a lot of small operations that can take an extremely long amount of time. After about 30 minutes the scripts froze. We were able to get the scripts to start running again by pressing Ctrl-C which caused the scripts to resume execution instead of killing the process.

Is there some sort of script timeout or mechanism that prevents long running scripts within PowerShell?

Quito

To anyone facing the same issue, check this out to disable this "feature" – Unsustainable

Answer 1

I had this problem due to a bad habit I have. If you select a little bit of text inside a console powershell, scripts logs freeze. Make sure nothing is selected after launching a big script :)

Calefacient

Answer 2

Like mentioned, when clicking/selecting text in powershell console, the script stops. You can disable this behaviour like this:

• Right-click the title bar

• Select Properties

• Select Options

• Under Edit Options, disable QuickEdit Mode

Note: You won't be able to select text from powershell window anymore.

Hunks

Answer 3

Try my kill timer script. Just change the $ScriptLocation variable to the script you want to run. That script will then run as a background job while the current windows keeps track of the timer. After the time expires the current window will kill the background job and write it all to logs.

    Start-Transcript C:\Transcriptlog-Cleanup.txt #write log to this location
$p = Get-Process  -Id $pid | select -Expand id  # -Expand selects the string from the object id out of the current process.
Write-Host $p
$BJName = "Clean-up-script"   #Define Background job name

$startTime = (Get-Date) # set start time
$startTime
$expiration = (Get-Date).AddMinutes(2)#program expires at this time
# you could change the expiration time by changing (Get-Date).AddSeconds(20) to (Get-Date).AddMinutes(10)or to hours or whatever you like


#-----------------
#Timer update function setup
function UpdateTime
   {
    $LeftMinutes =   ($expiration) - (Get-Date) | Select -Expand minutes  # sets minutes left to left time
    $LeftSeconds =   ($expiration) - (Get-Date) | Select -Expand seconds  # sets seconds left to left time


    #Write time to console
    Write-Host "------------------------------------------------------------------" 
    Write-Host "Timer started at     :  "  $startTime
    Write-Host "Current time         :  "  (Get-Date)
    Write-Host "Timer ends at        :  "  $expiration
    Write-Host "Time on expire timer :  "  $LeftMinutes "Minutes" $LeftSeconds "Seconds"
    Write-Host "------------------------------------------------------------------" 
    }

    #get background job info and remove the it afterwards + print info
function BJManager   
    {
       Receive-Job -Name $BJName  #recive background job results
       Remove-Job -Name $BJName -Force #remove job
       Write-Host "Retrieving Background-Job info and Removing Job..."
    }
#-----------------
$ScriptLocation = "C:\\Local-scripts\Windows-Server-CleanUp-Script-V2.4(Beta).ps1"  #change this Var for different kind of script locations

Start-Job -Name $BJName -FilePath $ScriptLocation #start this script as background job
# dont start job in the loop.
do{   #start loop

   Write-Host "Working"#start doing other script stuff
   Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 5000  #add delay to reduce spam and processing power
   UpdateTime #call upadate function to print time

   Get-Job -Name $BJName  | select Id, State ,Location , Name
        if((Get-Job).State -eq "Failed")
            {
                BJManager
            }
        elseif((Get-Job).State -eq "Completed")
            {
                BJManager
            }

 }
until ($p.HasExited -or (Get-Date) -gt $expiration) #check exit time

Write-Host "Timer Script Finished"
Get-Job -Name $BJName  | select Id, State ,Location , Name
UpdateTime

BJManager

Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 5000 #give it some time to write to log
Stop-Transcript
Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 5000 #give it some time to stop the logging before killing process
if (-not $p.HasExited) { Stop-Process -ID $p -PassThru } # kill process after time expires

Vial

Answer 4

try to add percentage calculation in your script.. so you can identity that how much time it would take to complete...

Whiten

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