Admin Script Editor > Installing and Configuring ASE
When installing Admin Script Editor on modern installations of Windows, you may encounter some speed bumps. This post is aimed at helping you to get past them quickly. There are also some recommended settings you may want to configure which are all documented here:
- When running the setup, the UAC prompt will show Publisher as Unknown. This is expected as there is no proper authority/company to offer a signature for this discounted software).
- You may also see a message that your system lacks the following gore-requisites required to install AdminScriptEditor: “Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0”. Pressing next attempts to automatically install it for you, but this will likely fail on newer systems with the message, “This setup is not supported on 64-bit versions of Windows XP”. Don’t worry, this is referring to the .NET Framework it tried to install, not ASE itself. Confirmed by the final message, “.NET Framework 2.0 could not be installed. Please use Windows Update to manually install this update on your system. AdminScriptEditor Setup cannot continue.” At this point the setup will close.
- To get past this you need to install the .NET Framework 3.5 feature of Windows (which includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0). This is best done using the Programs and Features applet:
- Press “Windows Logo” + “R” keys on the keyboard.
- Type “appwiz.cpl” in the “Run” command box and press Enter.
- In the “Programs and Features” window, click on the link on the left titled, “Turn Windows features on or off”.
- Check the “.NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0)” entry at the top of the listed features so that it is enabled and click the “OK” button.
- Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation and restart the computer, if prompted.
- Run the ASE Installer again and it should proceed without error.
- To get past this you need to install the .NET Framework 3.5 feature of Windows (which includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0). This is best done using the Programs and Features applet:
- The Admin Script Editor site no longer exists but, at least for a time, something called the “Business Hosting Journal” snatched it up to get their site to appear on the ASE Today page (which used to load dynamic content online). If you are offline, there is a static copy of the page that will load locally, but if you are online it is best to disable this feature to avoid it coming up each time you start the editor.
- Select “Tools” and then “Options” from the menu bar at the top of the program window.
- Under “General”, choose “Behavior”.
- Under “Start Page”, deselect the checkbox labeled “Show start page on application start”.
- This will prevent it from coming up in the future, to close the existing “StartPage” tab, click the black “X” at the top right of the window.
- There are some automatic formatting features that can be very helpful, or very frustrating. Most notable, you can encounter unexpected changes to code when pasting it into the editor. As such, you may wish to disable the feature.
- Select “ScriptFormatter” under the “Tools” menu on the menubar at the top of the window.
- For each language you will see granular controls for disabling this feature. You can turn off any you wish, but the one I recommend is labeled “Adjust indentation on paste” and is found on the General menu for each language.
- If you don’t like this feature, it can be turned off globally:
- Select “Tools” and then “Options” from the menu bar at the top of the program window.
- Under “Formatting”, choose “Script Code” and deselect the checkbox labeled, “Enable script code formatting”.
- One other thing to be aware of is that this is a 32 bit application. This can cause confusion if you are on a 64 bit system and have your PowerShell environment set as desired but not your 32 bit environment. The most common issue is with Script Execution settings. ASE lets you specify this in settings (Tools > Options > Script > Security) but it is looking only to the 32 bit environment. Likewise, when you execute to debug code in ASE it will be doing so in a 32 bit environment, so you’ll likely want to ensure you have your 64 bit and 32 bit PowerShell environments set identically to avoid unexpected behavior.