List 'target' of 'links' - powershell

Question

I need to get the 'target' inside of a shortcut link to another server.
But… when I use -Recurse, it follows the links, instead of simply just getting the shortcut target.
Here is code that I found online that I edited to serve my purpose. But it goes into the links and tries to find shortcuts within another server:
#Created By Scott
$varLogFile = "E:\Server\GetBriefsTargets.log"
$varCSVFile = "E:\Server\GetBriefsTargets.csv"
function Get-StartMenuShortcuts
{
$Shortcuts = Get-ChildItem -Recurse "F:\Connect" -Include *.lnk
#$Shortcuts = Get-ChildItem -Recurse "D:\Scripts\scott_testing" -Include *.lnk
$Shell = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell
foreach ($Shortcut in $Shortcuts)
{
$Properties = #{
ShortcutName = $Shortcut.Name;
ShortcutFull = $Shortcut.FullName;
ShortcutPath = $shortcut.DirectoryName
Target = $Shell.CreateShortcut($Shortcut).targetpath
}
New-Object PSObject -Property $Properties
}
[Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($Shell) | Out-Null
}
$Output = Get-StartMenuShortcuts
$Output
ECHO "$Output" >> $varLogFile
ECHO "$Output" >> $varCSVFile
Could someone please offer advice on what I can change so that it still finds all of the shortcut links in all of the folders? and stops going inside of those links?
ie:
F:\Connect\CLIENTA\shortcut.lnk
F:\Connect\CLIENTB\shortcut.lnk
etc.
There's about 100 clients that I have to get their links and I don't want to do it manually (each month).
Here is the error that I get upon trying to run this script:
Get-ChildItem : The specified path, file name, or both are too long. The fully
qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must
be less than 248 characters.
At D:\Scripts\scott_testing\GetShortcutTarget_edit1.ps1:8 char:18
+ $Shortcuts = Get-ChildItem -Recurse "F:\Connect" -Include *.lnk
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : ReadError: (F:\Connect\CLIENTA\briefs\FILENAME:String) [Get-ChildItem], PathTooLongException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : DirIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetChildItemCommand
It is going 'inside' of the link and trying to find shortcuts on another server.

Answer 1

I can't reproduce. All the targets are probably found.
The results shown in the console by the $output-line should show everything as it should be. If not, update the question with the actual output, the desired output.
The only error I see here is that you try to save CSV-objects using output (text) redirection. That would only return the string-representation of the objects, which is not CSV. In this situation it doesn't output anything when I try it because $output is an array of objects that return nothing when the ToString() method is called.
Replace:
ECHO "$Output" >> $varCSVFile
With:
$Output | Select ShortcutName, ShortcutFull, ShortcutPath, Target | Export-CSV -Path $varCSVFile -NoTypeInformation
Sample output:
"ShortcutName","ShortcutFull","ShortcutPath","Target"
"WinSystem.lnk","C:\Users\frode\Desktop\test\WinSystem.lnk","C:\Users\frode\Desktop\test","C:\Windows\System"
"Lol.lnk","C:\Users\frode\Desktop\Lol.lnk","C:\Users\frode\Desktop","C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe"
"Windows.lnk","C:\Users\frode\Desktop\Windows.lnk","C:\Users\frode\Desktop","\\localhost\c$\Windows"
"WinSystem32.lnk","C:\Users\frode\Desktop\WinSystem32.lnk","C:\Users\frode\Desktop","\\127.0.0.1\c$\Windows\System32"
UPDATE If you want it do a recursive search you could try something like this. Be aware that the target of the "second-level" shortcut (ex \\server\share\shortcutb.nk might have c:\temp as a target which means you'll get a local path and not an UNC for the remote computer (see MyEnd.lnk in sample output below).
Warning: This could easily result in a infinite loop (circular referencing) or long running search (because of recursive search).
function Get-StartMenuShortcuts ($path) {
$Shortcuts = Get-ChildItem -Path $path -Recurse -Include *.lnk
#$Shortcuts = Get-ChildItem -Recurse "D:\Scripts\scott_testing" -Include *.lnk
$Shell = New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell
foreach ($Shortcut in $Shortcuts)
{
$Properties = #{
ShortcutName = $Shortcut.Name;
ShortcutFull = $Shortcut.FullName;
ShortcutPath = $shortcut.DirectoryName
Target = $Shell.CreateShortcut($Shortcut).targetpath
}
Get-StartMenuShortcuts -path $Properties.Target
New-Object PSObject -Property $Properties
}
[Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($Shell) | Out-Null
}
$output = Get-StartMenuShortcuts -path "F:\Connect"
Example output:
"ShortcutName","ShortcutFull","ShortcutPath","Target"
"WinSystem.lnk","C:\Users\frode\desktop\test\WinSystem.lnk","C:\Users\frode\desktop\test","C:\Windows\System"
"MyEnd.lnk","\\127.0.0.1\c$\EFI\MyEnd.lnk","\\127.0.0.1\c$\EFI","C:\Users\frode\Desktop\TheEnd"
"EFI.lnk","C:\Users\frode\desktop\EFI.lnk","C:\Users\frode\desktop","\\127.0.0.1\c$\EFI"
"Lol.lnk","C:\Users\frode\desktop\Lol.lnk","C:\Users\frode\desktop","C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe"
If you want to only get the deepest level, you should add a "level"-counter to each object that increases for each recursion call and then keep only the highest ones etc. It might get complicated depending on you needs so that would require a separate detailed question.

Answer 2

I found a command that will work in command prompt, but never seemed to work with powershell:
DIR /AL /S F:\Connect
It took a while to run... but it did.
Also, I found a program that did it in like 2 seconds:
http://sumtips.com/2012/10/find-symbolic-links-ntfs-junction-points-windows.html
I was trying to find the 'symbolic links' ... which I was stating targets.