Remove column name from PowerShell select-object results - powershell

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

Answer 1

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