Powershell Get-Help -Detailed cannot find help files

Hi John,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.

You may please refer to the below article to Display information about Windows PowerShell commands and concepts.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh849696.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

Please refer to the examples section in the above article and check it helps.

Hope the information helps. Do reply if you need further assistance.

Thank you.

Thanks for your reply. The help topic has this note at the bottom:

TROUBLESHOOTING NOTE: In Windows PowerShell 3.0 and 4.0, Get-Help cannot find About topics in modules unless the module is imported into the current session.

This led me realise that the problem is with cmdlets in the Microsoft.PowerShell.Core module. This module includes such cmdlets as:
Get-Command

Get-Help

Invoke-Command

Where-Object

among others.

This module cannot be imported:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Import-Module Microsoft.PowerShell.Core
Import-Module : The specified module 'Microsoft.PowerShell.Core' was not
loaded because no valid module file was found in any module directory.
At line:1 char:1

Does this work for you on Windows 10?

With the help of ProcMon from Sysinternals.com, I discovered that PowerShell is failing to find C:\Windows\SysWOW64\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\en-US\System.Management.Automation.dll-Help.xml (this test was run with the 32-bit PowerShell). On my Windows 2012 (PowerShell 3.0) computer, where Get-Help works as expected, the file may be found at that location as well as in C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\en-US\System.Management.Automation.dll-Help.xml.

On my Windows 10 computer, the PowerShell\v1.0\en-US contains only the following 13 files:
about_WS-Management_Cmdlets.help.txt
default.help.txt
Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Diagnostics.dll-help.xml
Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Management.dll-help.xml
Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Utility.dll-help.xml
Microsoft.PowerShell.ConsoleHost.dll-help.xml
Microsoft.PowerShell.Core-help.xml
Microsoft.PowerShell.Security.dll-help.xml
Microsoft.WSMan.Management.dll-help.xml
powershell.exe.mui
PSEvents.dll.mui
pspluginwkr.dll.mui
pwrshmsg.dll.mui

On Windows 2012, the same directory contains 117 files so it seems that on Windows 10 files are missing. How can I install these missing files? As I mentioned in my original post, I tried Update-Help -Force but it did not help.

I inspected Microsoft.Powershell.Core-help.xml and found that it contained the help that I was looking for. I copied this file to System.Management.Automation.dll-Help.xml (the file that PowerShell tries to open when you run the command "Get-Help Get-Help" and Get-Help now works as expected.

This is just a workaround. I do not know why PowerShell on my system tries to find the help for cmdlets in Microsoft.PowerShell.Core in System.Management.Automation.dll-Help.xml instead of Microsoft.Powershell.Core-help.xml.