You can get them the same way you set them [System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariables([System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine) [System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariables([System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::User) [System.Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariables([System.EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Process) More on reddit.com

Powershell has no "Environments". If they " look similar to variables", you're most likely talking about environment variables. They are not related to Powershell, they are part of the environment the OS provides to process. They provide information to the processes. Partly they are maintained by the OS itself, partly they are user maintained to configure and control processes. More on reddit.com

$env is a powershell object just like $true. If you want to set an environment variable there's 2 normal ways to do it, one using $env, the second using [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable Using $env will only set the variable for the current powershell process, whereas using [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable you can set it for different areas (process, user, or machine). When you do $INCLUDE you're not setting an environment variable, you're just creating a variable called $INCLUDE. see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff730964.aspx More on reddit.com

There are a lot of different ways to do this, I like PowerShell's flexibility when dealing with strings. Single quotes do indeed turn everything literal. however, single quotes are literal inside of double quotes msiexec wont care if the path is encased in single or double quotes so you could use single quotes in your string -ArgumentList "/I '$env:temp\My MSI File.msi' /qn" You could also escape the double quote with a back tick -ArgumentList "/I `"$env:temp\My MSI File.msi`" /qn" Unrelated to your post but helpful when dealing with strings. If you are trying to access a property in an object that is a string it can be formatted like this "This is the users first name $($user.firstname)" More on reddit.com