Powershell script to scan a target directory - powershell

Question

I am getting an error when trying to scan a target directory within Powershell.
The code I am using is;
$path = read-host 'Enter the target drive letter'
$objects = get-childitem $path -force -recurse
Essentially what I want to do is get this general search working (scanning a user-specified location) so that I can then refine it to search for specific items such as files by filetype, size etc. When this runs, however, I get an error when the path contains a space, such as the 'documents and settings' or 'program files' folders in the drive.
Is there any way I can do this without getting this error? I am quite new to powershell, and I couldn't see this answered anywhere else, but I apologise if this has already been covered elsewhere.
Update:
It's running on Powershell v2.0. Thinking about it, the reason I thought it was space-related is because these are the only items which seem to error, but the message itself says;
Get-ChildItem : Access to the path 'C:\Documents and Settings' is denied. At
C:\users\robert\desktop\v1.ps1:5 char:25 + $objects = get-childitem <<<< $path
- force -recurse + CategoryInfo : PermissionDenied: (C:\Documents and
Settings:String) [Get-ChildItem], UnauthorizedAccessException +
FullyQualifiedErrorId :
DirUnauthorizedAccessError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetChildItemCommand
Sorry if this was misleading, I thought as I was running this as an administrator with unrestricted execution policy the permissions shouldn't be a problem, but if this is what's actually causing it is there a way to override this so it will scan everything on the target drive?

Answer 1

Use: (see additional double quotes)
$objects = get-childitem "$path" -force -recurse

Answer 2

Vista or Windows 7? Maybe no problem, if it's just stumbling on the "Documents and Settings" junction on the root. The junction links to c:\users and maybe gci doesn't follow the link, to prevent a circular or incomplete search. Here's another way to stumble on this:
at vanilla cmd:
cd 'C:\documents and settings'
explorer .
On Win7 I get a popup error message:
Location is not available
C:\documents and settings is not accessible
Access is denied
No error with cd 'C:\documents and settings' and the shell returns a prompt inside that folder (as opposed to the link target, c:\users); and running the single command explorer 'C:\documents and settings' launches the My Documents folder without error ...but i digress.
We wouldn't want our recursive searches running in endless loops or skipping folders between 'Documents and Settings' and Users. Maybe get-childItem should handle this in some better way, dunno.
Meanwhile, you could exclude junction points this way. I haven't tested large recursive searches this way, but they might run longer.
gci "c:\" -force | where {($_.attributes.toString() -like "*ReparsePoint*") -eq $false}
Results do not include 'Documents and Settings' unless we swap $true for $false.