The problem with logging in PowerShell is that it does not capture all output, especially the one from other executables.

I've ran into this issue when one of my PowerShell scripts did not run properly as a scheduled task.

Instead of using the logging mechanisms of PowerShell I simply used output redirection which only works correctly because I've used cmd to execute Powershell with a given script.

The action of the scheduled task looks like this now:

cmd /C C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowershell\v1.0\powershell.exe -command scriptname >> logname.txt 2>&1


The > symbol is a redirection into the given output file. Using >> instead of > appends the content instead of creating a new file each time it is called. The 2>&1 part redirects the output of stderr into stdout, which enables the logging of error messages as well. If you skip this there won’t be error messages in the log file.

Sidenote: I knew this from unix shells and was quite surprised to find that in the oldschool cmd as well!