How can I run PowerShell with the .NET 4 runtime?

PowerShell (the engine) runs fine under .NET 4.0. PowerShell (the console host and the ISE) do not, simply because they were compiled against older versions of .NET. There's a registry setting that will change the .NET framework loaded systemwide, which will in turn allow PowerShell to use .NET 4.0 classes:

reg add hklm\software\microsoft\.netframework /v OnlyUseLatestCLR /t REG_DWORD /d 1
reg add hklm\software\wow6432node\microsoft\.netframework /v OnlyUseLatestCLR /t REG_DWORD /d 1

To update just the ISE to use .NET 4.0, you can change the configuration ($psHome\powershell_ise.exe.config) file to have a chunk like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
    <startup>
      <supportedRuntime version="v4.0.30319" />
    </startup>
</configuration>

You can build .NET 4.0 applications that call PowerShell using the PowerShell API (System.Management.Automation.PowerShell) just fine, but these steps will help get the in-the-box PowerShell hosts to work under .NET 4.0.

Remove the registry keys when you don't need them any more. These are machine-wide keys and forcibly migrate ALL applications to .NET 4.0, even applications using .net 2 and .net 3.5

Here is the contents of the configuration file I used to support both .NET 2.0 and .NET 4 assemblies:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <!-- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/w4atty68.aspx -->
  <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true">
    <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" />
    <supportedRuntime version="v2.0.50727" />
  </startup>
</configuration>

Also, here’s a simplified version of the PowerShell 1.0 compatible code I used to execute our scripts from the passed in command line arguments:

class Program {
  static void Main( string[] args ) {
    Console.WriteLine( ".NET " + Environment.Version );

    string script = "& " + string.Join( " ", args );
    Console.WriteLine( script );
    Console.WriteLine( );

    // Simple host that sends output to System.Console
    PSHost host = new ConsoleHost( this );
    Runspace runspace = RunspaceFactory.CreateRunspace( host );

    Pipeline pipeline = runspace.CreatePipeline( );
    pipeline.Commands.AddScript( script );

    try {
      runspace.Open( );
      IEnumerable<PSObject> output = pipeline.Invoke( );
      runspace.Close( );

      // ...
    }
    catch( RuntimeException ex ) {
      string psLine = ex.ErrorRecord.InvocationInfo.PositionMessage;
      Console.WriteLine( "error : {0}: {1}{2}", ex.GetType( ), ex.Message, psLine );
      ExitCode = -1;
    }
  }
}

In addition to the basic error handling shown above, we also inject a trap statement into the script to display additional diagnostic information (similar to Jeffrey Snover's Resolve-Error function).

Just run powershell.exe with COMPLUS_version environment variable set to v4.0.30319. For example, from cmd.exe or .bat-file:

set COMPLUS_version=v4.0.30319
powershell -file c:\scripts\test.ps1