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PowerShell registry keys basic operation


Working with registry keys is good and bad.

Good if you know exactly what you are doing, bad if you are just experimenting and you mess up the entire system.

Anyway, virtual machines will always save the day during test or experiment stage. Once everything is okay then deploy to the actual or production environment. If the test goes haywire, just trash the VM and start all over again.

Below are just simple and basic commands in PowerShell to query or get data from the registry.

This command below will list all the software listed on HKCU\Software path.

Get-ChildItem -Path HKCU:\Software

It’s quite useful to run it sometimes, so you will know what software is inside your system.

Below will list the user shell folders on the system.

Get-itemproperty 'HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders'

Sample output:

AppData                                : C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming
Local AppData                          : C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local
My Video                               : C:\Users\Administrator\Videos
My Pictures                            : C:\Users\Administrator\Pictures
Desktop                                : C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop

To get the list of software that runs on startup of the Windows computer:


Get-Itemproperty HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

The output will show the list of programs that runs when Windows starts, if there is a software that should not be listed there and you don’t expect it to be there then just delete it.


More example on this link below:

Cheers! Guys. Till next time. PowerShell has its power but be ethical and don’t abuse that power.


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