Integrated console does not write output on Windows Insider build 16193

System Details

• Operating system name and version: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.16193.1001]
• VS Code version: 1.12.1
• PowerShell extension version: 1.0.0
• Output from $PSVersionTable:

Issue Description

VSCode cannot launch integrated powershell and stuck at showing “starting powershell…” like this:

Attached Logs

log.zip

[daviwil]

Workaround

OK folks, I’ve got a workaround for this issue. Open up your VS Code profile at one of the following paths (create the file if it doesn’t already exist):

Windows PowerShell 5.1

$HOME\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.VSCode_profile.ps1

PowerShell Core 6.0

$HOME\Documents\PowerShell\Microsoft.VSCode_profile.ps1

Insert this line at the top of the file:

[System.Console]::OutputEncoding = [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII

Now restart VS Code. When the Integrated Console appears, you should start to see output again.

Explanation

Something happened in the latest Windows Insider builds to cause output in the Integrated Console to not be written inside of VS Code’s integrated terminal. My guess is that there’s some specific set of factors that contribute to this issue since it doesn’t happen when you set powershell.exe to use UTF-8 output encoding inside of VS Code. I’ll continue investigating this issue to try and find a real solution, but the workaround should suffice for now.

[Jaykul]

But it’s fixed in 16241 👍