Understanding the Profiles
As in you can see in my previous post, when you add aliases, functions, and variables to Windows PowerShell, you are actually adding them only to the current Windows PowerShell session. If you exit the session or close Windows PowerShell, the changes are lost.
To retain these changes, you can create a Windows PowerShell profile and add the aliases, functions, and variables to the profiles. The profile is loaded every time that Windows PowerShell starts.
You can have four different profiles in Windows PowerShell. The profiles are listed in load order. The most specific profiles have precedence over less specific profiles where they apply.
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%windir%\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\ Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1
This profile applies to all users, but only to the Microsoft.PowerShell shell.
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%UserProfile%\My Documents\WindowsPowerShell\profile.ps1
This profile applies only to the current user, but affects all shells.
Creating a Profile
Windows PowerShell profiles are not created automatically. To create a profile, create a text file with the specified name in the specified location. Typically, you will use the user-specific, shell-specific profile, known as the Windows PowerShell user profile. The location of this profile is stored in the $profile variable.
To display the path to the Windows PowerShell profile, type:
To determine whether a Windows PowerShell profile has been created on the system, type:
If the profile exists, the response is True; otherwise, it is False.
To create a Windows PowerShell profile file, type:
new-item -path $profile -itemtype file -force
To open the profile in Notepad, type:
To create one of the other profiles, such as the profile that applies to all users and all shells, type:
new-item -path C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\profile.ps1 -itemtype file -force