Microsoft finally put together a powerful command line tool for Windows that makes Bash on Linux looks like small potato. The new powershell runs .NET and understands objects when you pipe from one process to another. Given the power and the things you can do with powershell, Microsoft is rightfully cautious about hackers and script abuse. PowerShell, by default, is very secure and disallows any powershell scripts from running. If you try calling a ps1 file, you'll get this error message:

File C:\Temp\Backup.ps1 cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. Please see "get-help about_signing" for more details.

To run PowerShell scripts (files that end with .ps1), you must first set the execution policy to Unrestricted.

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

Once you do that, Windows will allow you to execute any ps1 file. Enjoy!