I copied a powershell.exe file for creating a custom terminal profile but the $PROFILE environment variable remains unchanged. I like it to change when I run the copied executable. I have already tried setting $PROFILE = "C:\New\Path\to\Profile" but this does nothing.

I copied a powershell.exe file for creating a custom terminal profile but the $PROFILE environment variable remains unchanged. I like it to change when I run the copied executable. I have already tried setting $PROFILE = "C:\New\Path\to\Profile" but this does nothing.

• powershell

1 Answer 1

The value(s) of the automatic $PROFILE variable can not be changed (meaningfully).^[1]

Instead of creating a copy of powershell.exe (the Windows PowerShell CLI) in a different location, use the original along with CLI parameters that emulate loading a profile file from a custom location:

powershell.exe -NoProfile -NoExit -File C:\New\Path\to\Profile.ps1

^{Note: By using -NoProfile, none of the - potentially multiple - profile files will be loaded.}

^{[1] Except indirectly, if you change the location of the well-known Documents folders, which has far-reaching consequences, however. See this answer for details.
The fact that PowerShell even technically allows you to assign a new value to the $PROFILE variable - which, however, has no effect (leaving aside that, conceptually, making this assignment in-session, after the session has already started, would be too late) - should be considered a bug; see this answer.}