Remove column name from PowerShell select-object results

Question

Overall my goal is to get the VNC version for a list of remote computers along with the uninstall GUID so I can remotely uninstall VNC Viewer from certain computers. I have used the Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product but that is extremely slow.

I have the following script but in the results it includes the name of the select-object parameter.

$computers = Get-Content -Path "C:\Computers.txt"

$Results = @()

ForEach ($Computer in $Computers) {
    $Results += New-Object PSObject -Property @{
        "ComputerName" = $Computer

        "Name" = Invoke-Command -ComputerName $Computer -ScriptBlock { Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* } `
        | Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.DisplayName -like "VNC V*"} | select-object DisplayName

        "DisplayVersion" = Invoke-Command -ComputerName $Computer -ScriptBlock { Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* } `
        | Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.DisplayName -like "VNC V*"} | select-object DisplayVersion

        "ModifyPath" = Invoke-Command -ComputerName $Computer -ScriptBlock { Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* } `
        | Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.DisplayName -like "VNC V*"} | select-object ModifyPath

        "Vendor" = Invoke-Command -ComputerName $Computer -ScriptBlock { Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* } `
        | Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.DisplayName -like "VNC V*"} | select-object Publisher

    }
}

$Results | Select-Object ComputerName,Name,DisplayVersion,ModifyPath,Vendor | Sort-Object ComputerName  | Export-Csv  C:\VNC.csv -notype ;

My results look like this:

ComputerName   : ComputerName
Name                   : @{DisplayName=VNC Viewer 5.2.3}
DisplayVersion     : @{DisplayVersion=5.2.3}
ModifyPath           : @{ModifyPath=MsiExec.exe /I{18B1E36F-0DA3-4FDA-BC57-DD815B0DF3B2}}
Vendor                 : @{Publisher=RealVNC Ltd}

I would want it to look like this:

ComputerName   : ComputerName
Name                   : VNC Viewer 5.2.3
DisplayVersion     : 5.2.3
ModifyPath           : MsiExec.exe /I{18B1E36F-0DA3-4FDA-BC57-DD815B0DF3B2}
Vendor                 : RealVNC Ltd

Is this possible or am I going about this script entirely wrong? I haven't figured out a way to run this Invoke-Command for multiple parameters and still output the results in individual columns any other way.

This script works but takes forever for 100's of computers:

if (Test-Path C:\VNCInstalled.csv) {Remove-Item C:\VNCInstalled.csv}
if (Test-Path C:\Computers.txt) {Remove-Item C:\Computers.txt}
$DirSearcher = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher([adsi]'')
$DirSearcher.Filter = '(&(objectClass=Computer)(!(cn=*esx*)) (!(cn=*slng*)) (!(cn=*dcen*)) )'
$DirSearcher.FindAll().GetEnumerator() | sort-object { $_.Properties.name } `
| ForEach-Object { $_.Properties.name }`
| Out-File -FilePath C:\Computers.txt

Get-Content -Path c:\Computers.txt `
| ForEach-Object {Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product -ComputerName $_} `
| Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.Name -like "VNC V*"} `
| select-object @{Name="ComputerName";Expression={$_.PSComputerName}},
                Name,
                @{Name="InstallLocation";Expression={$_.PackageCache}},
                Vendor,
                Version,
                @{Name="GUID";Expression={$_.IdentifyingNumber}} `
| Sort-Object ComputerName `
| Export-CSV -path c:\VNCInstalled.csv -notype

Try select-object -ExpandProperty DisplayVersion

woxxom
– woxxom

2016-08-30 15:11:40 +00:00
Commented Aug 30, 2016 at 15:11 — woxxom
– woxxom, Commented Aug 30, 2016 at 15:11
Wow, that easy, awesome and thank you!!

onefiscus
– onefiscus

2016-08-30 15:33:06 +00:00
Commented Aug 30, 2016 at 15:33 — onefiscus
– onefiscus, Commented Aug 30, 2016 at 15:33

FoxDeploy · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-31 14:39:11Z

Change all of your Select-Object commands to Select-Object -ExpandProperty PropertyName, to discard the property name / column header.

This is the answer I gave three years ago and I think it was really a poor answer. Let me do a better job now.

Why your current code is slow

Your current code enumerates all machines from AD and puts them in a file called Computers.txt. Simple, and you do it fine.

Next up, your code performs this operation:

Get-Content -Path c:\Computers.txt | 
ForEach-Object {Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product -ComputerName $_} `
| Where-Object -FilterScript {$_.Name -like "VNC V*"} [...]

This can be summarized as 'For each computer, request the full Win32_product table, and then after that, filter down to apps named VNC.' This is HUGELY performance impacting and for a few reasons.

Even on a fast modern computer, querying Win32_Product will take 30 seconds or more, because it returns every application installed. (on a new VM for me it took more than a minute with just a handful of apps installed!)
Querying Win32_Product also has this fun quirk which makes it take even longer, quoted from MSDN Documentation on the Win32_Product Class

Warning Win32_Product is not query optimized. Queries such as "select * from Win32_Product where (name like 'Sniffer%')" require WMI to use the MSI provider to enumerate all of the installed products and then parse the full list sequentially to handle the “where” clause. This process also initiates a consistency check of packages installed, verifying and repairing the install. With an account with only user privileges, as the user account may not have access to quite a few locations, may cause delay in application launch and an event 11708 stating an installation failure. For more information, see KB Article 794524.

So to summarize, querying Win32_Product is slow, AND it also triggers a consistency chceck on every app, AND we also have this query written to retrieve every single app before filtering. These add up to a process which probably takes ~3 minutes per pc, and will operate serially (one after the other) and take forever.

How to fix it

Software info can be retrieved reliably in two places:

If you have SCCM/ConfigMgr installed on your devices, it adds the Win32_AddRemoveProgram WMI Class you can query, which is a super fast version of Win32_Product
If not, we can always retrieve info from the registry.

Here's a short snippet to get applications like VLC installed on a computer (I don't have VNC like you, so I'm making due)

Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Where-object DisplayName -like "VLC*" |Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, InstallDate,UninstallString


DisplayName     : VLC media player
DisplayVersion  : 3.0.8
Publisher       : VideoLAN
InstallDate     :
UninstallString : "C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\uninstall.exe"

This operation is much faster, only 400 MS or so. Sadly we cannot get much faster using the registry as it has a very weird PowerShell provider that doesn't implement the -Filter parameter, so we do have to retrieve all programs and then filter to our desired choice.

Updating your script to use this function instead

I took the liberty of rewriting your script to use this approach, and restructured it a bit for better readability.

$results = New-object System.Collections.ArrayList
$computers = Get-Content -Path c:\Computers.txt 
foreach ($computer in $computers){
    #get VNC entries from remote computers registry
    $VNCKeys = Invoke-Command -ComputerName $computer -ScriptBlock {
        Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | 
            Where-object DisplayName -like "VNC V*" | 
                Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, UninstallString, @{Name=‘ComputerName‘;Expression={$computer}}
        }#end of remote command

    if ($VNCKeys -ne $null){
        forEach($VNCKey in $VNCKeys){
            [void]$results.Add($VNCKey)
        } 
    }
}

$results | Sort-Object ComputerName | Export-CSV -path c:\VNCInstalled.csv -NoTypeInformation

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Remove column name from PowerShell select-object results

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