I am trying to use VMWare PowerCLI to automate the shutdown of the VMs and ESX hosts. The process loads the vim.psc1 snapin for Powershell and then launches the Shutdown_All.ps1 Powershell script. "C:\WINDOWS\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -psconsolefile "C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\vSphere PowerCLI\vim.psc1" "& "C:\Scripts\Shutdown_All.ps1" When launching the .bat file manually, everything works as designed. However, the object of this process is to have the script automated in a power outage situation. The datacenter is running on a Liebert UPS. During a power outage the Liebert Multilink client software successfully launches the .bat file but hangs and then minutes later pops up with an authentication prompt. If adminstrator credentials are entered, the script continues to run successfully. What are the apparent security credential differences between being called by the software and being executed by the current user (administrator)? How do I work this so that the Powershell Script will launch without prompt?

http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/2008/06/04/importing-and-exporting-credentials-in-powershell/ http://geekswithblogs.net/Lance/archive/2007/02/16/106518.aspx These 2 links will help. What DPAPI does is use a special hash that only the encrypting user can decrypt. So if you encrypt your password with UserAdmin1, you will have to have your script run as UserAdmin1 to be able to decrypt the password saved to disk. Feel free to ask more questions as required...