How do I get the value of a registry key and ONLY the value using powershell

Question

Can anyone help me pull the value of a registry key and place it into a variable in PowerShell? So far I have used Get-ItemProperty and reg query

Answer 1

If you create an object, you get a more readable output and also gain an object with properties you can access:

$path = 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework'
$obj  = New-Object -TypeName psobject

Get-Item -Path $path | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Property | Sort | % {
$command = [String]::Format('(Get-ItemProperty -Path "{0}" -Name "{1}")."{1}"', $path, $_)
$value = Invoke-Expression -Command $command
$obj | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name $_ -Value $value}

Write-Output $obj | fl

Sample output: InstallRoot : C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\

And the object: $obj.InstallRoot = C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\

The truth of the matter is this is way more complicated than it needs to be. Here is a much better example, and much simpler:

$path = 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework'
$objReg = Get-ItemProperty -Path $path | Select -Property *

$objReg is now a custom object where each registry entry is a property name. You can view the formatted list via:

write-output $objReg

InstallRoot        : C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\
DbgManagedDebugger : "C:\windows\system32\vsjitdebugger.exe"

And you have access to the object itself:

$objReg.InstallRoot
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\

Answer 2

Following code will enumerate all values for a certain Registry key, will sort them and will return value name : value pairs separated by colon (:):

$path = 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework';

Get-Item -Path $path | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Property | Sort | % {
    $command = [String]::Format('(Get-ItemProperty -Path "{0}" -Name "{1}")."{1}"', $path, $_);
    $value = Invoke-Expression -Command $command;
    $_ + ' : ' + $value; };

Like this:

DbgJITDebugLaunchSetting : 16

DbgManagedDebugger : "C:\Windows\system32\vsjitdebugger.exe" PID %d APPDOM %d EXTEXT "%s" EVTHDL %d

InstallRoot : C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\

Answer 3

$key = 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion'
(Get-ItemProperty -Path $key -Name ProgramFilesDir).ProgramFilesDir

I've never liked how this was provider was implemented like this : /

Basically, it makes every registry value a PSCustomObject object with PsPath, PsParentPath, PsChildname, PSDrive and PSProvider properties and then a property for its actual value. So even though you asked for the item by name, to get its value you have to use the name once more.