Farewell to PowerShell 2.0: Legacy Tool Removed in Latest Windows Update
With the latest Windows Patch Day, Microsoft has closed another chapter in the history of its operating system. PowerShell 2.0, which was already classified as an outdated command line environment, is now finally being removed.
End of an era at Microsoft
PowerShell 2.0 is a function whose existence many users should no longer be aware of, because it is dragged by Microsoft in the deep system layers to this day, even though it has been considered outdated for a long time. Already with Windows 10 version 1709, i.e. in 2017, Microsoft officially explained the attitude.
The Version PowerShell 2.0 version originally introduced with Windows 7 and integrated in Windows Server 2008 R2 should revolutionize system management. At that time, PowerShell 2.0 was a significant progress compared to the classic command prompt and, among other things, brought object-oriented programming to Windows system administration.
17 years of PowerShell history
PowerShell 2.0 is removed with the new updates. According to Microsoft, this decision is made as part of a broader strategy for cleaning Legacy code, to reduce system complexity and to improve Windows security. PowerShell 2.0 was completed in August 2009 and was an integral part of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The version brought over 240 new CMDlets and introduced important functions such as PowerShell remoting and background jobs.
These innovations made it possible for the first time to carry out remote PowerShell commands on other computers and to process time-consuming tasks in the background. A special feature of PowerShell 2.0 was the introduction of the Integrated Scripting Environment (ISE), a graphical development environment for PowerShell scripts.
This offered syntax highlighting, intelliens and debugging functions, which significantly simplified the scripting position. In addition, Version 2.0 supported Windows PowerShell Workflows for the first time based on the Windows Workflow Foundation. So far, PowerShell 2.0 has been further available for compatibility reasons, since some Microsoft products such as SQL Server, Exchange Server and Sharepoint were still dependent on PowerShell 2.0.
Effects for IT administrators
Scripts that explicitly call Powershell 2.0 are automatically redirected to PowerShell 5.1 because this version is backward compatible. Nevertheless, there is a low probability that older scripts do not work as expected if they rely on specific behaviors of version 2.0. Microsoft recommends updating such scripts and removing the “version 2” request. Farewell to Powershell 2.0 was long overdue – Microsoft had encouraged users to switch to later versions. The distance not only reduces the system of the system, but also simplifies the maintenance and development of future Windows versions.
