A recurring problem that I have on every new system is that my PowerShell scripts will break on running Invoke-WebRequest due to the incredibly frustrating requirement that this Cmdlet cannot run until Internet Explorer has initialised. I would appreciate how we should script around and understand the following points:
How to test (in PowerShell) if Internet Explorer has been initialised?, and
A clean and simple and silent way to initialise Internet Explorer in the background so that my scripts don't break and can continue to run?
Also, I'm utterly confused on this one: Why are we still beholden (in 2020!) to the ancient, insecure and essentially useless application that is Internet Explorer?
The problem manifests itself with the following error if Invoke-WebRequest is run when IE has not been run:
Invoke-WebRequest : The response content cannot be parsed because the Internet Explorer engine is not available, or Internet Explorer's first-launch
configuration is not complete. Specify the UseBasicParsing parameter and try again.
At C:\Users\Boss\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\Custom-Tools\Custom-Tools.psm1:8677 char:13
+ $page = Invoke-WebRequest -uri $url
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : NotImplemented: (:) [Invoke-WebRequest], NotSupportedException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : WebCmdletIEDomNotSupportedException,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.InvokeWebRequestCommand