Get powershell to control Internet Explorer and switch between 2 webpages - powershell

Question

I want to have Internet Explorer to switch between 2 different webpages in an endless loop . The webpages is local files, that has to be viewed for 10 seconds before changing to next webpage. My code so far:
$ie = New-Object -Comobject 'InternetExplorer.Application'
$ie.Visible = $true
function IEWeb {
$ie.navigate(file://D:\web\index.html)
Start-sleep 10
$ie.navigate(file://D:\web\index2.html)
Start-sleep 10
}
while($true) {
IEWeb
}
Everything is working until the second webpage has to be loaded.
Then I get an error message:
Object is disconnected from it's clients. (Exception from HRESULT:0x800010108 (RPC_E_DISCONNECTED))
I have tried with global vars but still the same.
Can anyone give Me a hint of what I'm missing?

Answer 1

I wasn't able to produce your issue, but how about this?
function Navigate-Rotate {
[CmdletBinding()]
Param (
[Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
[string[]]$Url
,
[Parameter()]
[int]$SleepSeconds = 10
)
Process {
$ie = New-Object -Comobject 'InternetExplorer.Application'
$ie.Visible = $true
while ($ie.Visible) {
foreach ($uri in $Url) {
if ($ie.Visible) {$ie.navigate2($uri)}
Start-Sleep -Seconds $SleepSeconds
if ($ie.Visible) {$ie.Stop()} #just incase anything's running which may interfere
}
}
}
}
#Navigate-Rotate 'https://stackexchange.com','https://google.com'
Navigate-Rotate 'file:///D:/web/index.html', 'file:///D:/web/index2.html'
Notes
I keep checking the value of $ie.Visible. Should a user exit IE this ensures that my code won't try to use any of $ie's methods. NB: This value doesn't get set to false once closed; rather it ceases to exist; but that evaluates as falsey, so has the same effect. There is a potential race condition, but it's minor / can't be avoided (or I don't know how to avoid it).
I use navigate2 instead of navigate since this method's a bit more flexible / there's no drawback.
I use $ie.Stop() after loading each page to ensure that IE's not busy with other tasks when I try to navigate away from the page. That should stop anything in the page from being able to block our attempt to navigate elsewhere.
Other Notes
The change from a function to a cmdlet doesn't make much difference; it's just my preferred approach.
Passing in a list of URLs to the function rather than hardcoding the 2 URLs means I can change the URLs easily (e.g. by reading in from a file), and I'm not restricted to 2 files/sites.
Details of the methods and properties available in IE are listed here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/internet-explorer/ie-developer/platform-apis/aa752084(v=vs.85)
Apologies that I can't explain why you're seeing the issue you are; I just hope that this amended version avoids the issue you're seeing, and a few other potential issues you've not yet seen.