Speed up PowerCLI

Alan Renouf is a community peer for VMware PowerCLI, Virtu-Al.Net.  In 2009, he was named a vEXPERT by VMware.  Alan's main focus is to teach and help other VMware admins automate their VMware infrastructures and make their lives easier through automation.
www.virtu-al.net.

Whilst at the last UK VMware User Group I was talking to someone who advised his PowerCLI prompt took a long time to initialise, he had the latest version (4.0 U1) and the latest version of PowerShell (V2), this is a problem I had seen before and especially when your computer is not attached to the internet and you start PowerCLI.

Symptom: The PowerShell prompt starts straight away but PowerCLI does not, if you start PowerShell normally and then add the PowerCLI snap-in it takes a good minute or so before returning back to the prompt and being ready for action.

Fix:  I had come across this before on the PowerCLI forum where someone had this exact issue and had advised us how to fix it, I thought I would blog it here, especially for him but also for the other people reading this blog and suffering with the slow start-up of PowerCLI.

Here is how to fix it:

1.  Start Internet Explorer
2.  Go to the Tools menu
3.  Go to Internet Options
4.  Go to the Advanced tab and uncheck “Check for publisher’s certificate revocation” so there is no tick in the box.

Result: PowerCLI will now start faster, especially if you are not online or behind a proxy server.