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JeffBeallFlag for United States of America

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list of installed programs

at work I have an off site facility that I need to upgrade the computers to win7. they are currently running winxp
I have the upgraded computers imaged and ready to go, and over our network, I can copy the user's documents. so all of that is going fine. my problem is that I would like to know what programs are used the most, but I DON'T want to use the add/remove control panel. the reason is that I don't have a good time to remote into their pc's. So I was hoping there is something in the registry or something like that, so I could get the information without bothering the users.
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Michael Dyer
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You can also use the WMI command line interface.

wmic /namespace:\\%computername% product get name,version
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ScottRockstad, I have used pstools for the psexec tool, but didn't think to use the psinfo thing, that works nicely. But I being greedy and was wondering if there is a way to have it show the programs that aren't used.

so I tried your fancy wmic thing and that was really cool, but for some reason it didn't show all of the programs that are installed.

I kind of like the wmic thing better because it makes me feel like I know how to program, which, of course, I don't know how. ( it's lame, I know )
but I was wondering if the wmic thing would have more ways to get information than psinfo.
Jeff, I haven't yet found a way to meter software usage without having a specific software metering application, like SCCM or Dell KACE. Nor have I been able to get any useful data out of Windows, WMIC, or PowerShell that shows the last-used date of an application.

With regards to programs not being displayed, I don't know what to tell you. Just be sure that you are running the WMIC commands in an admin-level command prompt.
Jeff, the following may explain why you're not getting a full software listing when using the WMIC command.

According to Microsoft:
"The WMI Win32_Product and Win32_SoftwareFeature classes allow you to enumerate the software and software features that have been installed on a computer using Windows Installer. Limiting enumeration to software installed by Windows Installer does not provide a complete inventory of the applications installed on a computer." See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee176543.aspx for more info.

Regarding, "...if the wmic thing would have more ways to get information than psinfo.", that would depend on what information you'd like to retrieve. The WMI command interface (WMIC) is extremely powerful.

Enter the following command in an elevated command prompt to get help with WMIC:
wmic /?
thank  you for the help.