Powershell with Shutdown command error handling

Question

My shutdown script using the Shutdown -R command to do a mass reboot of machines. If the Shutdown -R throws a error like "RPC Service Unavailable, or access denied" I can't catch it or just don't know how to. Can someone help? I don't want to use Restart-Computer in powershell since you can't delay the reboot and can't add comments.

foreach($PC in $PClist){
ping -n 2 $PC >$null
if($lastexitcode -eq 0){
  write-host "Rebooting $PC..." -foregroundcolor black -backgroundcolor green
  shutdown /r /f /m \\$PC /d p:1:1 /t 300 /c "$reboot_reason"
  LogWrite "$env:username,$PC,Reboot Sent,$datetime"
} else {
  write-host "$PC is UNAVAILABLE" -foregroundcolor black -backgroundcolor red
  LogWrite "$env:username,$PC,Unavailable/Offline,$datetime"
}
}

Answer 1

If PowerShell Remoting is enabled on $PC something like this might work:

Invoke-Command -Computer $PC { shutdown /r /f /d p:1:1 /t 300 /c $ARGV[0] } `
    -ArgumentList $reboot_reason

The -Computer option takes an array of names/IPs.

If you want to stick with your approach and just catch errors from shutdown.exe, evaluate $LastExitCode after the command:

shutdown /r /f /m \\$PC /d p:1:1 /t 300 /c "$reboot_reason" 2>$null
if ($LastExitCode -ne 0) {
  Write-Host "Cannot reboot $PC ($LastExitCode)" -ForegroundColor black `
      -BackgroundColor red
} else {
  LogWrite "$env:username,$PC,Reboot Sent,$datetime"
}

2>$null suppresses the actual error message, and the check on $LastExitCode triggers the success/failure action.