How to capture process output asynchronously in powershell?

Unfortunately asynchronous reading is not that easy if you want to do it properly. If you call WaitForExit() without timeout you could use something like this function I wrote (based on C# code):

function Invoke-Executable {
    # Runs the specified executable and captures its exit code, stdout
    # and stderr.
    # Returns: custom object.
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
        [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
        [String]$sExeFile,
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)]
        [String[]]$cArgs,
        [Parameter(Mandatory=$false)]
        [String]$sVerb
    )

    # Setting process invocation parameters.
    $oPsi = New-Object -TypeName System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo
    $oPsi.CreateNoWindow = $true
    $oPsi.UseShellExecute = $false
    $oPsi.RedirectStandardOutput = $true
    $oPsi.RedirectStandardError = $true
    $oPsi.FileName = $sExeFile
    if (! [String]::IsNullOrEmpty($cArgs)) {
        $oPsi.Arguments = $cArgs
    }
    if (! [String]::IsNullOrEmpty($sVerb)) {
        $oPsi.Verb = $sVerb
    }

    # Creating process object.
    $oProcess = New-Object -TypeName System.Diagnostics.Process
    $oProcess.StartInfo = $oPsi

    # Creating string builders to store stdout and stderr.
    $oStdOutBuilder = New-Object -TypeName System.Text.StringBuilder
    $oStdErrBuilder = New-Object -TypeName System.Text.StringBuilder

    # Adding event handers for stdout and stderr.
    $sScripBlock = {
        if (! [String]::IsNullOrEmpty($EventArgs.Data)) {
            $Event.MessageData.AppendLine($EventArgs.Data)
        }
    }
    $oStdOutEvent = Register-ObjectEvent -InputObject $oProcess `
        -Action $sScripBlock -EventName 'OutputDataReceived' `
        -MessageData $oStdOutBuilder
    $oStdErrEvent = Register-ObjectEvent -InputObject $oProcess `
        -Action $sScripBlock -EventName 'ErrorDataReceived' `
        -MessageData $oStdErrBuilder

    # Starting process.
    [Void]$oProcess.Start()
    $oProcess.BeginOutputReadLine()
    $oProcess.BeginErrorReadLine()
    [Void]$oProcess.WaitForExit()

    # Unregistering events to retrieve process output.
    Unregister-Event -SourceIdentifier $oStdOutEvent.Name
    Unregister-Event -SourceIdentifier $oStdErrEvent.Name

    $oResult = New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property ([Ordered]@{
        "ExeFile"  = $sExeFile;
        "Args"     = $cArgs -join " ";
        "ExitCode" = $oProcess.ExitCode;
        "StdOut"   = $oStdOutBuilder.ToString().Trim();
        "StdErr"   = $oStdErrBuilder.ToString().Trim()
    })

    return $oResult
}

It captures stdout, stderr and exit code. Example usage:

$oResult = Invoke-Executable -sExeFile 'ping.exe' -cArgs @('8.8.8.8', '-a')
$oResult | Format-List -Force 

For more info and alternative implementations (in C#) read this blog post.