unable to detect PowerShell due to group policy blocking registry access

Description

In the previous version of GitHub desktop client I could specify PowerShell as the shell to launch for a given project, and it gave me cool information in the command line about the current state of the repo (if I was ahead/behind, conflicts, changes, etc.). There is no longer an option for me to select PowerShell in the new version. There is a drop down in advanced options for shell, but it only has “Command prompt” in it.

Version

GitHub Desktop version: 1.0.4

OS version: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.15063]

Steps to Reproduce

1. Launch the client
2. Go to File -> Options and click on the Advanced tab
3. Click the drop down for Shell.

Expected: A number of shells are available (cmd, ps, bash, etc.) Actual: only cmd is available.

1. Launch the cmd shell for a project. Expected: it gives data about the local branch vs. tracking branch in the command line Actual: it does not.

Expected behavior: That I can use PowerShell for git through github desktop client and that it gives me information in the shell about the branch.

Actual behavior: It is not possible and I can only use a command prompt with no info.

Reproduces how often: 100%

Logs

Additional Information

[begoldsm]

@shiftkey I think I have figured it out. It appears that the logic used to read the registry is being blocked by group policy since it attempts to open the registry location in rw mode. When I launch GitHub desktop as an admin, it is properly finding PowerShell, but when it is launched as a standard user (without admin privileges), it cannot read that key (even though the key is readable through other means as a regular user). At this point, I would say the “fix” is to either use a different, more restrictive system friendly way of determining if PowerShell is available or to come up with a way to install the client in a way that requires admin access only during setup and then maintains its own copy of config settings (maybe?)

[arshmohd]

@shiftkey yes, that is the policy that is set for all our domain accounts. @danilaml that is potentially a solution, but I wonder if there is some other way to read from the registry without attempting to open it in edit mode (rw). The registry is still accessible (I can use powershell to Get-Item HKLM://…), it just can’t be opened for writes.

Were you able to get around this, I am running into the requirement, registry read is blocked due to GP, is there another way around to just read the registry?