Exchange Server 2016 Unable to determine file version PowerShellEngine

Exchange Server 2016 Unable to determine file version PowerShellEngine">

Twan van Beers
07 March, 2017

After installing Exchange Server 2016 CU4 on Windows Server 2016, the Exchange Management Shell would fail to connect with the error:

New-PSSession : [xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Processing data from remote server xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx failed with the following error message: [ClientAccessServer=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,BackEndServer=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,RequestId=bc9549f6-b772-4933-8132-84dfcd57372d,TimeStamp=07/03/2017 12:25:32] [AuthZRequestId=7f855afa-31f2-4e46-bd1b-c1bf1ebc95f1][FailureCategory=AuthZ-SetupVersionInformationCorruptException] Unable to determine the installed file version from the registry key 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\PowerShellEngine'. For more information, see the about_Remote_Troubleshooting Help topic. At line:1 char:1

Of course I searched online, like a good Microsoft evangelist I tried Bing first and then when I didn’t find a suitable answer I resorted to Google. The only articles I found were ones talking about hacking the registry, which in my opinion is fine for a lab or dev server but not cool for a production server.

After some thinking about how Microsoft connects to Exchange via Remote PowerShell and the fact that there was a \3\PowerShellEngine key, I thought let’s try to install PowerShell-V2 and lo and behold it resolved the problem.

So it seems that Exchange Server 2016 CU4 on Windows Server 2016 needs PowerShell-V2 as a pre-requisite (eventhough it is not stated anywhere and it doesn’t install that feature itself when told to install dependent roles and features…) Anyway simple fix

Install-WindowsFeature PowerShell-V2

Twan van Beers

Twan is a senior consultant with over 30 years of experience. He has a wide range of skills including Messaging, Active Directory, SQL, Networking and Firewalls. Twan loves to write scripts and get deep and dirty into debugging code, in order to understand and resolve the most complex of problems.