![\"Hey,](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/q-for-powertip.jpg\" "\\"Hey,")
<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>Hey, Scripting Guy! We have a dumb application that we have to use at work. The company has released a new version of this application, and I am trying to write a Windows PowerShell script to uninstall the old application—the problem is that I need to find the application first. I tried looking in the registry, but the install key is empty…figures. Like I said, this is a really dumb application. I read the guest blog written by Marc Carter<\/a> about problems using the Win32_Product <\/b>WMI class, but it looks like I am going to be stuck using this anyway. The problem is that it is really slow. Is there any way to speed this thing up? I have to query over a thousand computers, and in our testing, this query takes nearly five minutes to complete—that would be three and a half days for only one query.<\/p>\n—BT<\/p>\n
Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. The Scripting Wife and I were in Texas for the Corpus Christi Windows PowerShell User Group meeting when Marc Carter told me about the problem with the MSI installer reconfiguring applications when the Win32_Product <\/b>WMI class is queried. I immediately encouraged him to write a guest blog about this issue.<\/p>\n BT, there is a way to use the Win32_Product <\/b>WMI class in a more efficient manner. It relies on using the [WMI] type accelerator, instead of doing a generic WMI query. The problem is that the [WMI] type accelerator returns a specific instance of a WMI class. To connect to a specific instance, I must use the Key<\/b> property of a WMI class.<\/p>\n I can use the Get-WMIKey<\/b> function from my HSGWMImoduleV6 module<\/a>. In the following code, I first import my HSGWMImoduleV6 module, and then I use the Get-WMIKey<\/b> function to return the key to the Win32_Product <\/b>WMI class. The commands and the output from the commands are shown here.<\/p>\n PS C:\\> Import-Module hsg*6<\/p>\n PS C:\\> Get-WmiKey win32_product<\/p>\n IdentifyingNumber<\/p>\n Name<\/p>\n Version<\/p>\n The Key<\/b> property for Win32_Product<\/b> is a composite key comprised of IdentifyingNumber<\/b>, Name<\/b>, and Version<\/b>. The easy way to get this information is to use the Get-WmiObject<\/b> cmdlet to query for the information. I only need to do this once, and I will have the three pieces of information. A table is a nice way to display the information. In the code shown here, I use the Get-WmiObject<\/b> cmdlet (gwmi<\/b> is an alias) to return product information, and then I pipe the management objects to the Format-Table<\/b> (ft<\/b> is an alias) cmdlet for display.<\/p>\n gwmi win32_product | ft name, version, ident*<\/p>\n In the image that follows, I import the HSGWMIModuleV6 module, use the Get-WMIKey<\/b> function to retrieve the Key<\/b> property of the Win32_Product <\/b>WMI class. I then use the Get-WmiObject<\/b> cmdlet (gwmi<\/b> is an alias) to query the Win32_Product<\/b> WMI class, and I output the management objects to a table via the Format-Table<\/b> (ft<\/b> is alias) cmdlet. The following image displays the commands and the output from the commands.<\/p>\n BT, you may ask, “What about Marc Carter’s warning about using the Win32_Product <\/b>WMI class? “ Well as seen in the results from querying the event log, it is a concern. Shortly after querying the Win32_Product <\/b>WMI <\/b>class, I used the Get-EventLog<\/b> cmdlet to query the application log for MSIInstaller events. The following image shows massive product reconfiguring going on.<\/p>\n The query to return the three parts of the composite key only needs to run once; the values do not change. It is also possible to use the Get-WmiObject<\/b> cmdlet and a filter<\/i> to improve the performance of the command a little bit. The nice thing about this command is that it returns the information that is required by the [WMI] type accelerator. The command and associated output are shown here.<\/p>\n PS C:\\> gwmi win32_product -filter “Name LIKE ‘%Silverlight%'”<\/p>\n IdentifyingNumber : {89F4137D-6C26-4A84-BDB8-2E5A4BB71E00}<\/p>\n Name : Microsoft Silverlight<\/p>\n Vendor : Microsoft Corporation<\/p>\n Version : 4.0.60831.0<\/p>\n Caption : Microsoft Silverlight<\/p>\n When I have the three pieces of information (the IdentifyingNumber<\/b>, the Name<\/b>, and the Version<\/b>), it is time to create the key. This is where quite a bit of experimentation could be required. I have to use the back tick (grave) character to escape inside quotation marks. I have to escape the quotation mark and the opening curly bracket for the IdentifyingNumber <\/b>property. I also have to escape the closing curly bracket and the closing quotation mark. I then have to escape the quotation marks that surround Microsoft Silverlight, in addition to the quotation marks for the Version<\/b> property. There are also two quotation marks at the end of the ClassKey<\/b>.<\/p>\n Here is the key I derived for Microsoft Silverlight on my computer. (This is a single line command. A space between Microsoft and Silverlight exists, but other than that, there are no spaces).<\/p>\n $classKey=”IdentifyingNumber=`”`{89F4137D-6C26-4A84-BDB8-2E5A4BB71E00`}`”,Name=`”Microsoft Silverlight`”,version=`”4.0.60831.0`””<\/p>\n The reason for all the escaping in the ClassKey<\/b>, is that WMI expects the quotation marks and the curly brackets in the key itself. To see what WMI expects to receive via the command, I use the Windows Management Instrumentation Tester (WbemTest<\/b>) command, and I view the instances of the class. The following image illustrates the instances of Win32_Product<\/b> on my computer.<\/p>\n When I have the ClassKey<\/b>, I can use the [WMI] type accelerator to connect to the specific software package (Microsoft Silverlight in this example). In fact, using the [WMI] type accelerator is very easy. Here is the command. (The command is [WMI], the class name, and the key).<\/p>\n [wmi]”Win32_Product.$classkey”<\/p>\n I can also include the WMI namespace (really important if the class resides in a namespace other than the default root\\cimv2). In the command that follows, notice that there is a backslash that precedes the word root. <\/i>One other thing to notice is that a colon separates the WMI namespace and the WMI class name.<\/p>\n [wmi]”\\root\\cimv2:Win32_Product.$classkey”<\/p>\n If I need to connect to a WMI class on a remote computer, I use a double backslash and the name of the computer, then the WMI namespace, the WMI class, and the WMI ClassKey<\/b>. The command that follows illustrates this.<\/p>\n [wmi]\\\\remotehost\\root\\cimv2:Win32_Product.$classkey<\/p>\n In the image that follows, I illustrate the different ways of querying WMI for Microsoft Silverlight software. I then compare the speed of using the Get-WmiObject<\/b> cmdlet against the speed of using the [WMI] type accelerator. As shown in the following image, the Get-WmiObject<\/b> cmdlet, using the filter <\/i>to find Microsoft Silverlight, takes over five seconds on my laptop. Using the [WMI] type accelerator takes less than one-half of a second. This is more than 10 times faster. <\/p>\n By the way, there was not much difference between using the filter <\/i>to look for Microsoft Silverlight or using the Where-Object<\/b>. In the following output, I use the Measure-Object<\/b> cmdlet to determine the performance of using the Where-Object<\/b> (the ?<\/b> is an alias for Where-Object<\/b>).<\/p>\n PS C:\\> measure-command {gwmi win32_product | ? {$_.name -match ‘silverlight’}}<\/p>\n Days : 0<\/p>\n Hours : 0<\/p>\n Minutes : 0<\/p>\n Seconds : 5<\/p>\n Milliseconds : 311<\/p>\n Ticks : 53112518<\/p>\n TotalDays : 6.14728217592593E-05<\/p>\n TotalHours : 0.00147534772222222<\/p>\n TotalMinutes : 0.0885208633333333<\/p>\n TotalSeconds : 5.3112518<\/p>\n TotalMilliseconds : 5311.2518<\/p>\n If you suspect that the problem with the filter <\/i>is that I used the like<\/b> operator as opposed to the equality<\/b> operator, that is not the case. Here are the results from using the equality<\/b> operator.<\/p>\n PS C:\\> measure-command {gwmi win32_product | ? {$_.name -match ‘silverlight’}}<\/p>\n Days : 0<\/p>\n Hours : 0<\/p>\n Minutes : 0<\/p>\n Seconds : 5<\/p>\n Milliseconds : 311<\/p>\n Ticks : 53112518<\/p>\n TotalDays : 6.14728217592593E-05<\/p>\n TotalHours : 0.00147534772222222<\/p>\n TotalMinutes : 0.0885208633333333<\/p>\n TotalSeconds : 5.3112518<\/p>\n TotalMilliseconds : 5311.2518<\/p>\n When using the [WMI] type accelerator, a complete instance of the WMI class instance returns. The properties and their associated values are shown in the following image. Notice two properties: the __Path<\/b> (that is, double underscore Path<\/b>) property is the key to the WMI class instance. The InstallLocation<\/b> <\/i>property points to the location where the software installs.<\/p>\n BT, you did not ask, but there is an Uninstall<\/b> <\/i>method available from the Win32_Product<\/b> WMI class. It appears only on instances of the class. Therefore, it is possible to uninstall software by using the command that is shown here. (If I want to uninstall from a large collection of servers, I use the foreach <\/i>statement ($servers is an array of server names).<\/p>\n foreach($server in $servers)<\/p>\n { ([wmi]”\\\\$server\\root\\cimv2:Win32_Product.$classKey”).uninstall() }<\/p>\n BT, that is all there is to using the Win32_Product<\/b> WMI class to detect or to uninstall software. Join me tomorrow when I will have a guest blog written by Raymond Mitchel as he talks about Windows PowerShell and SharePoint.<\/p>\n I invite you to follow me on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.<\/p>\n Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Summary: Learn how to use Windows PowerShell to get software installation locations, and to uninstall software from remote computers. Hey, Scripting Guy! We have a dumb application that we have to use at work. The company has released a new version of this application, and I am trying to write a Windows PowerShell script to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[237,16,3,4,45,6],"class_list":["post-11791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-basic-computer-information","tag-desktop-management","tag-scripting-guy","tag-scripting-techniques","tag-windows-powershell","tag-wmi"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":" Summary: Learn how to use Windows PowerShell to get software installation locations, and to uninstall software from remote computers. Hey, Scripting Guy! We have a dumb application that we have to use at work. The company has released a new version of this application, and I am trying to write a Windows PowerShell script to […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Hey,](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/a-for-powertip.jpg\" "\\"Hey,")
<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span> Hello BT,<\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/0160.HSG-12-14-11-01.png\" "\\"Image")
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