In this simple guide we will show you two different ways of how to get list of all installed programs in Windows 10, 8 or Windows 7 using built-in command line tools. When it may be necessary? For example, the list of installed programs can be useful when you reinstall Windows, audit installed software in inventory scenarios or when you want to find the unwanted programs.
Let’s see how to get a list of installed programs using Windows command prompt and using PowerShell.
Method 1: Command Prompt utility WMIC
The list of programs installed in the system can be obtained by using WMIC command line utility, that can access the WMI namespace. Run cmd.exe as an administrator and run the following command:
wmic product get name,version
After a short wait, you will see a list of names in the console and versions of the programs that installed on your system.
To export this list into a text file, run following command:
wmic product get name,version /format:csv > c:\Distr\InstalledApps_%Computername%.csv
After command execution, open file InstalledApps_* which is located in the folder C:\Dist. In this file in CSV format in addition to programs list will be specified the current computer name (it may be useful for further analysis). Open this file using any text editor (notepad.exe in our example).
Method 2: Windows PowerShell
Let’s see how to get a list of installed programs using PowerShell.
The list of programs that user sees in the section Programs and Features of the Control Panel is built on the base of the contents of the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
Tip. For 32-bit application on 64-bit operating system additionally you need to get the contents of branch HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall
Let’s get the contents of this branch. Open PoSh console by pressing Win+R key and entering powershell. Then, run the following command:
Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, Size, InstallDate | Format-Table -AutoSize
As you can see, the resulting list contains program name, version, publisher and installation date.
To export a list of programs in text file (c:\docs\list-installed-programs.txt), you can use the command as follows:
Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, InstallDate | Format-Table -AutoSize > c:\docs\list-installed-programs.txt
The above method can only get a list of the Classical desktop Windows programs, but not the Modern applications from Windows Store 10.
Get-AppxPackage | Select Name, PackageFullName |Format-Table -AutoSize > c:\docs\list-store-apps.txt
To get similar list of applications from a remote computer, run:
Invoke-command -computer remote_pc_name {Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, InstallDate | Format-Table -AutoSize }
To compare a list of applications received from two different computers and to determine which applications are missing, you can use this command:
Compare-Object -ReferenceObject (Get-Content C:\Install\list-installed-programs.txt) -DifferenceObject (Get-Content C:\Install\list-installed-programs2.txt)
As a result, you will see the difference in two applications lists.
Another way to get a list of installed programs – to use the Get-WmiObject cmdlet. Simply copy and paste next command:
Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product | Select-Object -Property Name
That’s all! Hope this article will be helpful!
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