How can I extract "Path to executable" of all services with PowerShell - powershell

Question

Get-Service *sql* | sort DisplayName | out-file c:/servicelist.txt
I have a one line PowerShell script to extract list of all services running on my local machine, now, in addition to displaying "Status", "Name" and "DisplayName" I also want to display "Path to executable"

Answer 1

I think you'll need to resort to WMI:
Get-WmiObject win32_service | ?{$_.Name -like '*sql*'} | select Name, DisplayName, State, PathName
Update
If you want to perform some manipulation on the selected data, you can use calculated properties as described here.
For example if you just wanted the text within quotes for the Pathname, you could split on double quotes and take the array item 1:
Get-WmiObject win32_service | ?{$_.Name -like '*sql*'} | select Name, DisplayName, #{Name="Path"; Expression={$_.PathName.split('"')[1]}} | Format-List
Get-CimInstance can also be used to achieve the same, see here for the difference between CIM and WMI.
Get-CimInstance win32_service | ?{$_.Name -like '*sql*'} | select Name, DisplayName, #{Name="Path"; Expression={$_.PathName.split('"')[1]}} | Format-List

Answer 2

Since Get-WmiObject have been deprecated in PowerShell Core, you can use
Get-CimInstance -ClassName win32_service | ?{$_.Name -match '^sql'} | Select Name, DisplayName, State, PathName >> C:\temp\sqlservices.txt
instead.
If you don't need to check against a regular expression you can also use the -Filter parameter:
Get-CimInstance -ClassName win32_service -Filter "Name like 'sql%'" | Select Name, DisplayName, State, PathName >> C:\temp\sqlservices.txt

Answer 3

A variant on the WMI Query that may be faster (I just had to do this for an SCCM Client)
$SQLService=(get-wmiobject -Query 'Select * from win32_service where Name like "*SQL*"') | Select-object Name, DisplayName, State, Pathname
The other trick is to trap for the multiple SQL results if you want the path names without the Double Quotes (so you can action upon them)
$SQLService | Select-Object Name, DisplayName, State, #{Name='PathName';Expression=$_.Pathname.replace('"','')}
The big advantage to using -query in the get-wmiobject (or get-ciminstance) is the speed of processing. The older example gets a full list and then filters, whilst the latter grabs a very direct list.
Just adding in two cents :)
Cheers all!
Sean
The Energized Tech

Answer 4

You can also use the Regular Expression pattern and dump the result to file.
Get-WmiObject win32_service | ?{$_.Name -match '^sql'} | select Name, DisplayName, State, PathName >> C:\temp\sqlservices.txt

Answer 5

I'm not comfortable with the accepted answer's use of Expression={$_.PathName.split('"')[1]}} because it doesn't handle the variants of quotes, spaces, and args that I see in the data.
Here's a clunky method that does.
function PathFromServicePathName($pathName) {
# input can have quotes, spaces, and args like any of these:
# C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe
# "C:\Program Files\Realtek\Audio\HDA\RtkAudioService64.exe"
# C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe -k netsvcs -p
# "C:\Program Files\Websense\Websense Endpoint\wepsvc.exe" -k ss
# if it starts with quote, return what's between first and second quotes
if ($pathName.StartsWith("`"")) {
$pathName = $pathName.Substring(1)
$index = $pathName.IndexOf("`"")
if ($index -gt -1) {
return $pathName.Substring(0, $index)
}
else {
# this should never happen... but whatever, return something
return $pathName
}
}
# else if it contains spaces, return what's before the first space
if ($pathName.Contains(" ")) {
$index = $pathName.IndexOf(" ")
return $pathName.Substring(0, $index)
}
# else it's a simple path
return $pathName
}
Get-WmiObject win32_service | select Name, DisplayName, #{Name="Path"; Expression={PathFromServicePathName $_.PathName}} | Format-List

Answer 6

A variant with Format-List with full path, results in file :
Get-WmiObject win32_service | Format-Table -Wrap -AutoSize -Property State,Name,PathName | out-file C:\servicelist.txt