chocolatey/choco · critical · FileNotFoundException

Unable to find suitable location for PowerShell. Searched th

Error message

Unable to find suitable location for PowerShell. Searched the following locations: '{0}'

What it means

Thrown by PowershellExecutor.GetPowerShellLocation when none of the candidate PowerShell executable paths in _powershellLocations exist on the filesystem. The method iterates the known locations and, finding no match, raises a FileNotFoundException listing every location it searched.

Source

Thrown at src/chocolatey/infrastructure/commands/PowershellExecutor.cs:79

                workingDirectory: fileSystem.GetDirectoryName(fileSystem.GetCurrentAssemblyPath()),
                stdOutAction: stdOutAction,
                stdErrAction: stdErrAction,
                updateProcessPath: true,
                allowUseWindow: AllowUseWindow
                );
        }

        public static string GetPowerShellLocation(IFileSystem fileSystem)
        {
            foreach (var powershellLocation in _powershellLocations)
            {
                if (fileSystem.FileExists(powershellLocation))
                {
                    return powershellLocation;
                }
            }

            throw new FileNotFoundException("Unable to find suitable location for PowerShell. Searched the following locations: '{0}'".FormatWith(string.Join("; ", _powershellLocations)));
        }

#pragma warning disable IDE0022, IDE1006
        [Obsolete("This overload is deprecated and will be removed in v3.")]
        public static int execute(
            string command,
            IFileSystem fileSystem,
            int waitForExitSeconds,
            Action<object, DataReceivedEventArgs> stdOutAction,
            Action<object, DataReceivedEventArgs> stdErrAction)
            => Execute(command, fileSystem, waitForExitSeconds, stdOutAction, stdErrAction);

        [Obsolete("This overload is deprecated and will be removed in v3.")]
        public static string get_powershell_location(IFileSystem fileSystem)
            => GetPowerShellLocation(fileSystem);
#pragma warning restore IDE0022, IDE1006
    }
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 0d5abdd10c)

Solutions

Ensure Windows PowerShell is installed and accessible at its default System32 path (verify `where powershell` resolves).
On PowerShell Core-only systems, confirm pwsh is on PATH at a searched location, or install it (winget install Microsoft.PowerShell).
If running under a custom IFileSystem in tests, make sure the fake filesystem reports the expected powershell path as existing.

Example fix

// before (custom test filesystem hides powershell)
var fs = new FakeFileSystem(); // FileExists always false
PowershellExecutor.GetPowerShellLocation(fs); // throws

// after
fs.SetupFileExists(@"C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe", true);
PowershellExecutor.GetPowerShellLocation(fs);

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

var known = new[]
{
    @"C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe",
    @"C:\Program Files\PowerShell\7\pwsh.exe"
};
if (!known.Any(File.Exists))
    throw new InvalidOperationException("No PowerShell installation found. Install Windows PowerShell or pwsh before running Chocolatey.");

Try / catch

try
{
    var ps = PowershellExecutor.GetPowerShellLocation(fileSystem);
}
catch (FileNotFoundException ex) when (ex.Message.Contains("PowerShell"))
{
    logger.Error(ex.Message + " Install PowerShell (Windows PowerShell or pwsh) and retry.");
    throw;
}

Prevention

Base-machine images used for Chocolatey must include PowerShell at a standard location.
In tests using a fake IFileSystem, ensure FileExists returns true for at least one searched powershell path.

When it happens

Trigger: Any Chocolatey operation that needs to invoke PowerShell (running install/uninstall scripts, ps1 execution) on a machine where neither Windows PowerShell (powershell.exe in System32) nor PowerShell Core (pwsh) is present at the searched paths. fileSystem.FileExists returns false for all entries in _powershellLocations.

Common situations: Hardened/Server Core images where PowerShell was intentionally removed, locked-down environments where System32 access is restricted, or a tampered/redirected filesystem abstraction in tests that hides the real binaries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of chocolatey/choco@0d5abdd10c (2026-08-13). Data as JSON: /api/errors/45fe47e9d4bd1485. Report an issue: GitHub.