Rebuilding your PC is always a drag, even with useful utilities like Ninite.
I recently created a PowerShell DSC script that I can use whenever I need to rebuild my PC. As part of that, I used the cChoco provider to automatically install applications using Chocolatey. I’ll be writing a blog post with more details shortly.
That’s a great way to get the applications installed, but not for keeping them up-to-date. Chocolatey allows you to run ‘choco upgrade all’ manually to do this:
Rather than manually create the scheduled task to automate this, I created this short PowerShell script:
| # See if choco.exe is available. If not, stop execution | |
| $chocoCmd = Get-Command –Name 'choco' –ErrorAction SilentlyContinue –WarningAction SilentlyContinue | Select-Object –ExpandProperty Source | |
| if ($chocoCmd -eq $null) { break } | |
| # Settings for the scheduled task | |
| $taskAction = New-ScheduledTaskAction –Execute $chocoCmd –Argument 'upgrade all -y' | |
| $taskTrigger = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger –AtStartup | |
| $taskUserPrincipal = New-ScheduledTaskPrincipal –UserId 'SYSTEM' | |
| $taskSettings = New-ScheduledTaskSettingsSet –Compatibility Win8 | |
| # Set up the task, and register it | |
| $task = New-ScheduledTask –Action $taskAction –Principal $taskUserPrincipal –Trigger $taskTrigger –Settings $taskSettings | |
| Register-ScheduledTask –TaskName 'Run a Choco Upgrade All at Startup' –InputObject $task –Force |
The script will:
- Locate the choco.exe binary (It’ll quit if it can’t find it in the path)
- Set up a scheduled task that runs said binary at system startup
Note that this script will only work on Windows 8 and newer machines, because it relies on the *-ScheduledTask cmdlets.
