Opening PowerShell Script and hide Command Prompt, but not the GUI - powershell

Question

I currently open my PowerShell script through a .bat file. The script has a GUI. I tried to put this in my script but it hid the GUI as well and also kept looping because I wanted my GUI to continuously loop:
powershell.exe -WindowStyle Hidden -file c:\script.ps1
How do we run a script without Command Promp, but also not hide the gui? And is that the same if we run the script using a .bat file? Thank you!

Answer 1

If you want to hide the Console behind the GUI I've had success with the following native functions:
# .Net methods for hiding/showing the console in the background
Add-Type -Name Window -Namespace Console -MemberDefinition '
[DllImport("Kernel32.dll")]
public static extern IntPtr GetConsoleWindow();
[DllImport("user32.dll")]
public static extern bool ShowWindow(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 nCmdShow);
'
function Show-Console
{
$consolePtr = [Console.Window]::GetConsoleWindow()
# Hide = 0,
# ShowNormal = 1,
# ShowMinimized = 2,
# ShowMaximized = 3,
# Maximize = 3,
# ShowNormalNoActivate = 4,
# Show = 5,
# Minimize = 6,
# ShowMinNoActivate = 7,
# ShowNoActivate = 8,
# Restore = 9,
# ShowDefault = 10,
# ForceMinimized = 11
[Console.Window]::ShowWindow($consolePtr, 4)
}
function Hide-Console
{
$consolePtr = [Console.Window]::GetConsoleWindow()
#0 hide
[Console.Window]::ShowWindow($consolePtr, 0)
}
Once the above functions have been added to your Form, simply call the Hide-Console function in your Form_Load event:
$OnFormLoad =
{
Hide-Console
}
If you need to show the Console, perhaps for debugging, you can easily show the console again by calling the Show-Console function:
$OnButtonClick =
{
Show-Console
}
For more information on the numbers you can pass to ShowWindow you can check out the ShowWindow documentation on MSDN here
Update based on comment
Thanks for this code. I tried to use it in my script, but where exactly am I suppose to put Hide-Console? My form load looks like this $objForm.Add_Shown({$objForm.Activate()}) [void] $objForm.ShowDialog()
To hide the console with this code, all you need to do is call Hide-Console. Since you already have code in the Shown event ($objForm.Add_Shown) we can simply add another line to call the command:
Change this:
$objForm.Add_Shown({$objForm.Activate()})
To this:
$objForm.Add_Shown({
$objForm.Activate()
Hide-Console
})
When your form is Shown the console will be hidden (You can still call Show-Console if you want to see it later).

Answer 2

If you run PowerShell from a shortcut with the window set to minimized, it will briefly flash a cmd icon in the taskbar but you barely notice it. Yet, it will start your PowerShell GUI without having a console window behind it.
C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -windowstyle Hidden -file "C:\path\whatever.ps1"
If you want to start a second GUI console window from whatever.ps1 without it stopping the processing on whatever.ps1 you need to use start-process. However, start-process with -WindowStyle hidden prevents the GUI from showing up. Removing -WindowStyle shows a command window behind your GUI. However, if you start-process with cmd.exe /k, it does work.
$argumentlist = "/c powershell.exe -file `"c:\path\whatever2.ps1`" -param1 `"paramstring`""
Start-Process cmd.exe -WindowStyle Hidden -ArgumentList $argumentlist
As a bonus, if you start whatever2.ps1 with a param() statement, you can pass named, required arguments. Just be sure it's the very first thing in the ps1 file, before assemblies even.
param (
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
[string]$var1
)
$argumentlist = "/c powershell.exe -file `"C:\path\whatever2.ps1`" -param1 `"param1string`""

Answer 3

In the solution proposed posted in a comment (*
Put it in a shortcut instead of in a batch file. Right click a blank
spot on desktop or in a folder window, New, Shortcut, paste your line
in, Next, name it, Finish
*.) to hide definitely the Command Prompt, I set, in the properties of the shortcut Run=minimized in General.

Answer 4

Simplified the function for show hide a bit
function Show-Console
{
param ([Switch]$Show,[Switch]$Hide)
if (-not ("Console.Window" -as [type])) {
Add-Type -Name Window -Namespace Console -MemberDefinition '
[DllImport("Kernel32.dll")]
public static extern IntPtr GetConsoleWindow();
[DllImport("user32.dll")]
public static extern bool ShowWindow(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 nCmdShow);
'
}
if ($Show)
{
$consolePtr = [Console.Window]::GetConsoleWindow()
# Hide = 0,
# ShowNormal = 1,
# ShowMinimized = 2,
# ShowMaximized = 3,
# Maximize = 3,
# ShowNormalNoActivate = 4,
# Show = 5,
# Minimize = 6,
# ShowMinNoActivate = 7,
# ShowNoActivate = 8,
# Restore = 9,
# ShowDefault = 10,
# ForceMinimized = 11
$null = [Console.Window]::ShowWindow($consolePtr, 5)
}
if ($Hide)
{
$consolePtr = [Console.Window]::GetConsoleWindow()
#0 hide
$null = [Console.Window]::ShowWindow($consolePtr, 0)
}
}
show-console -show
show-console -hide