How to find installed Software with PowerShell?

Question

Is there an option to find installed software with the PowerShell? Mainly software is installed on a MSI basis. I tried it with the following code but I am not sure if it works reliable and for every software product. For example, 32- and 64-bit?

Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | `
Select DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, InstallDate | sort {[string]$PSItem}

Is there a reliable way to find every installed software?

Answer 1

You can find all information about installed software, updates and hotfixes with the following PowerShell commands:

try{
    $InstalledSoftware = Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\*
    $InstalledSoftware += Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\*
} catch {
    Write-warning "Error while trying to retreive installed software from inventory: $($_.Exception.Message)"
}

If I you want to find the installed MSI's, you could use the following:

$InstalledMSIs = @()
foreach ($App in $InstalledSoftware){
    if($App.PSChildname -match "\A\{[0-9A-F]{8}-[0-9A-F]{4}-[0-9A-F]{4}-[0-9A-F]{4}-[0-9A-F]{12}\}\z"){
        $InstalledMSIs += New-Object PSObject -Property @{
            DisplayName = $App.DisplayName;
            DisplayVersion = $App.DisplayVersion;
            Publisher = $App.Publisher;
            InstallDate = $App.InstallDate;
            GUID = $App.PSChildName;    
        }
    }
}

Also, you can check the installed Features on a Windows Server 2008 or higher OS with the following command:

Get-WindowsFeature -ErrorAction Stop | Where-Object {$_.Installed} | Sort-Object DisplayName