Can Powershell Get-ChildProperty get a list of real registry keys like REG QUERY can without extra noise?

Question

In PowerShell 2.0 on Win2008R2, if I want to get the same output from a registry key that "REG QUERY" would give me, in as readable a format, with the values from a particular registry key, like this:

reg query hkcu\Software\Microsoft\CharMap

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\CharMap
    Advanced    REG_DWORD    0x0
    CodePage    REG_SZ       Unicode
    Font        REG_SZ       Arial

How would I do that with PowerShell? The behaviour of PowerShell mystifies me, once again.

Get-ItemProperty example:

Get-ItemProperty HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\CharMap


PSPath       : Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\Registry::HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\CharMap
PSParentPath : Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\Registry::HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft
PSChildName  : CharMap
PSDrive      : HKCU
PSProvider   : Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\Registry
Advanced     : 0
CodePage     : Unicode
Font         : Arial

In my contrived example above, I want to see "Advanced", "CodePage" and "Font", but not any of the PowerShell metadata (names starting in PS). Sadly filtering on the name "PS" would not work for me, because I am not REALLY trying to read the MS Windows Character Map settings, I simply chose them as a registry key that probably everyone with Windows has, so everyone can see how utterly different the experience of using PowerShell is to look at the registry, compared to say the REG.EXE program. There are reasons why anybody might want to get just the registry values from a registry key without getting any of the metadata, and anybody writing tools in PowerShell may want to do this simple task.

I would like output similar to REG QUERY but still in native PowerShell format, not just flattened to text. I've googled and searched all over and can't seem to figure this out.

I'd like to be able to for example do this:

  $all = GetRealRegistryKeysFrom(  HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\CharMap )
  for ($item in $all) { ... }

Update Using the function below, works great....

Example Get-RegistryKeyPropertiesAndValues -path HKCU:\Software\.....

Transference

Related, but which requires PS-RemoteRegistry. I'm wondering if it can be done without this extra module. : #11305108 – Transference

You also might want to take a look at this answer: #17838376 using PSCustomObject is a lot faster on my machine than the answer below. – Ihs

Answer 1

This is a trick:

Get-ItemProperty HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\CharMap  | out-string -stream | ? { $_ -NOTMATCH '^ps.+' }

The problem is when a property start with PS . Working on this code you can elaborate to exclude these:

PSPath
PSParentPath
PSChildName
PSDrive
PSProvider

... One by one inside the where clause. Or just try using

get-item hkcu\Software\Microsoft\CharMap

There a script that do what you need.

update reproduced script here:

Function Get-RegistryKeyPropertiesAndValues
{
  <#
    Get-RegistryKeyPropertiesAndValues -path 'HKCU:\Volatile Environment'
    Http://www.ScriptingGuys.com/blog
  #>

 Param(

  [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
  [string]$path)

 Push-Location
 Set-Location -Path $path
 Get-Item . |
 Select-Object -ExpandProperty property |
 ForEach-Object {
 New-Object psobject -Property @{"property"=$_;
    "Value" = (Get-ItemProperty -Path . -Name $_).$_}}
 Pop-Location
} #end function Get-RegistryKeyPropertiesAndValues

Orientation

@WarrenP Added a link to an interesting script. – Orientation

I moved a copy of that script function into the body because that's preferred here. That works great. – Transference

@WarrenP I posted a question+answer with a script that might be faster here: #17838376 – Ihs

@WarrenP Awesome script! Saved my ass after I build a pre-launch reg-cleaup script on top of PSRemoteRegistry (which is very nice) and could not deploy it for all user in the Citrix farm. Lesson learned: Best to stick with vanilla PS. – Klaus

Answer 2

Following code will enumerate all values for a certain Registry key, will sort them and will return value name : value pairs separated by colon (:):

$path = 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework';

Get-Item -Path $path | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Property | Sort | % {
    $command = [String]::Format('(Get-ItemProperty -Path "{0}" -Name "{1}")."{1}"', $path, $_);
    $value = Invoke-Expression -Command $command;
    $_ + ' : ' + $value; };

Like this:

DbgJITDebugLaunchSetting : 16

DbgManagedDebugger : "C:\Windows\system32\vsjitdebugger.exe" PID %d APPDOM %d EXTEXT "%s" EVTHDL %d

InstallRoot : C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\

Splay

Answer 3

Here's my substitute script for get-itemproperty I call get-itemproperty2.ps1:

# get-childitem skips top level key, use get-item
param([parameter(ValueFromPipeline)]$key)

process { 
  $valuenames = $key.getvaluenames() 

  if ($valuenames) { 
    $valuenames | foreach {
      $value = $_
      [pscustomobject] @{
        Path = $key -replace 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER',
          'HKCU:' -replace 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE','HKLM:'
        Name = $Value
        Value = $Key.GetValue($Value)
        Type = $Key.GetValueKind($Value)
      }
    }
  } else {
    [pscustomobject] @{
      Path = $key -replace 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER',
        'HKCU:' -replace 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE','HKLM:'
        Name = ''
        Value = ''
        Type = ''
    }
  }
}

Example:

get-item hkcu:\key1 | get-itemproperty2

Path       Name  Value  Type
----       ----  -----  ----
HKCU:\key1 name1     1 DWord

Melanoid

Answer 4

Here's a version which returns the output as objects, so they can be looped through programmatically.

gp "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection" | get-member | ? {$_.memberType -eq 'NoteProperty'} | ? {$_.name -notmatch '^PS'}

In a nutshell, what this is doing is:

• GP (short for get-itemProperty): Show me the values within this Registry key
• Since the result is one massive object instead of multiple small ones, get me the members of this object
• Filter out the methods (getType, toString etc) – those aren't useful to us
• Filter out all members beginning with "PS" since we know those to be junk
  (I'm not happy about using text-based filtering either, but what can you do?)

The result will be just the Registry values within that key.
Combine this with similar code just to enumerate subkeys and you have some pretty powerful PS.

Firedog

Answer 5

Oh, no ...

powershell gp 'HKCU:Software\Microsoft\CharMap'|more +7

Pierides

This does not provide an answer to the question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post. – Boulevard

@NoIdeaForName I do not understand what they mean. The results are identical. – Pierides