How to create a popup message in Powershell without buttons - powershell

Question

I'm trying to create a message dialogue in Powershell where the user has no option to action on the message as that is the intention. So the message will have the X button grayed along with the buttons (not showing buttons are even better).
The closest I could reach was disabling the X via below code:
$wshell = New-Object -ComObject Wscript.Shell -ErrorAction Stop
$wshell.Popup("Aborted",0,"ERROR!",48+4)
But cannot figure out disabling button part. Below MS articles were of little help as well:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2006/07/27/how-can-i-display-a-message-box-that-has-no-buttons-and-that-disappears-after-a-specified-period-of-time.aspx
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/x83z1d9f(v=vs.84).aspx
Referred to few other articles over net some even suggesting custom made buttons using HTML, or VB library. But not what I was looking for.
Any help/hint/suggestion would be deeply appreciated.
Regards,
Shakti

Answer 1

Dig into the .NET Windows.Forms namespace, you can make pretty much any kind of window you want with that:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.aspx
Here's a quick sample window w/ no buttons that can't be moved/closed by the user, but closes itself after 5 seconds:
Function Generate-Form {
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms
# Build Form
$objForm = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Form
$objForm.Text = "Test"
$objForm.Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(220,100)
# Add Label
$objLabel = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Label
$objLabel.Location = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(80,20)
$objLabel.Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(100,20)
$objLabel.Text = "Hi there!"
$objForm.Controls.Add($objLabel)
# Show the form
$objForm.Show()| Out-Null
# wait 5 seconds
Start-Sleep -Seconds 5
# destroy form
$objForm.Close() | Out-Null
}
generate-form

Answer 2

Using the script above as a launching point I'm attempting to make a function that will allow me to popup a please wait message run some more script then close the popup
Function Popup-Message {
param ([switch]$show,[switch]$close)
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Windows.Forms
# Build Form
$objForm = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Form
$objForm.Text = "Test"
$objForm.Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(220,100)
# Add Label
$objLabel = New-Object System.Windows.Forms.Label
$objLabel.Location = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(80,20)
$objLabel.Size = New-Object System.Drawing.Size(100,20)
$objLabel.Text = "Hi there!"
$objForm.Controls.Add($objLabel)
If ($show)
{
$objForm.Show() | Out-Null
$global:test = "Show"
}
If ($close)
{
# destroy form
$objForm.Close() | Out-Null
$global:test = "Close"
}
}
I can then get the popup to display by:
Popup-Message -show
At this point I can see the $test variable as Show
But when I try to close the window with:
Popup-Message -close
But the popup window will not close
If I look at $test again it will show as Close
I'm assuming this has something to do with keeping the function in the Global Scope but I can't figure out how to do this with the form