Question

Hope you can help…

Executing the below powershell (I’m a newbie btw) to get the value of a registry entry and when I execute the first powershell statement I get all the properties I’d expect but when I execute the second statement against VisualStudio\10.0 it returns no properties even though in the registry editor there are a bunch of properties (including InstallDir which is the one I’m chasing!) staring me in the face. Can you help??

Thanks

PS C:\DEV\GeoMet> Get-ItemProperty -path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion


    PSPath                   : Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
    PSParentPath             : Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows
    PSChildName              : CurrentVersion
    PSDrive                  : HKLM
    PSProvider               : Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\Registry
    SM_GamesName             : Games
    SM_ConfigureProgramsName : Set Program Access and Defaults
    CommonFilesDir           : C:\Program Files\Common Files
    CommonFilesDir (x86)     : C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files
    CommonW6432Dir           : C:\Program Files\Common Files
    DevicePath               : C:\Windows\inf
    MediaPathUnexpanded      : C:\Windows\Media
    ProgramFilesDir          : C:\Program Files
    ProgramFilesDir (x86)    : C:\Program Files (x86)
    ProgramFilesPath         : C:\Program Files
    ProgramW6432Dir          : C:\Program Files


PS C:\DEV\GeoMet> Get-ItemProperty -path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0
PS C:\DEV\GeoMet> 

Answer 1

You are almost surely looking at the 32-bit reg hive on a 64 bit machine. Double check your regedit path – is it really HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0?

I see properties (e.g. InstallDir) in the 32 bit key, but not the 64 bit key.

This would be the proper query if so:

Get-ItemProperty -path HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0