Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of Tommy_Cooper
Tommy_CooperFlag for Antarctica

asked on

Get-WMIObject Output issue

Hello All,

Banging my head against the wall with this one...

As part of a script I want to output to a text file the name of a server, the name of a service and the name of the user account that is used to run the service.  Input is obviously a csv or list of servers. just like this:
MyServerName,smstsmgr,LocalSystem

Open in new window


My issue is the output.  All I can get is too much information!  This is what I'm getting:

MyServerName,@{Name=smstsmgr; StartsAs=LocalSystem; DisplayName=ConfigMgr Task Sequence Agent}.name,@{Name=smstsmgr; StartsAs=LocalSystem; DisplayName=ConfigMgr Task Sequence Agent}.Displayname,.Startname
MyServerName,\\MyServerName\root\cimv2:Win32_Service.Name="smstsmgr".name,\\MyServerName\root\cimv2:Win32_Service.Name="smstsmgr".Displayname,\\MyServerName\root\cimv2:Win32_Service.Name="smstsmgr".Startname

Open in new window



This is on two lines in a text file.
This is my code:

function Get-AdminService

{
    [CmdletBinding()]

    Param()

    $Servers = Get-Content -Path $InputDir\RealServers.txt

    foreach ($Server in $Servers)
    {
        $SVC = Get-WMIObject -Class Win32_Service -Computername $Server -Filter "Name = 'smstsmgr'"

        foreach ($Service in $SVC)
        {
            Write-Verbose $Service.name 
            Add-Content -Path $OutputDir\ChgService.txt "$Server,$Service.name,$Service.Displayname,$Service.Startname"
        }
    }
}
Get-AdminService -Verbose

Open in new window


You can see where I'm writing verbose using just a single property and that works fine on the console. If I add multiple properties there it also doesn't work. If I wrap that part with "quotes" and just show a single property, I get a similar extended output to the file I'm generating:
VERBOSE: \\MyServerName\root\cimv2:Win32_Service.Name="smstsmgr".name

Open in new window


Please can anyone point out what I'm doing wrong and how I fix it?

Many thanks
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Dan Craciun
Dan Craciun
Flag of Romania image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of Tommy_Cooper

ASKER

Dan,

You're a star!

Thank you.
Nope, just banged my head against the same wall a while back :)

Glad I could help.
Solution has already been accepted, but here's an explanation of this behavior...
Inside a string, if you're displaying properties of an object you need to use subexpression notation "$($x.property)".  So you could do the following:
           Add-Content -Path $OutputDir\ChgService.txt "$Server,$($Service.name),$($Service.Displayname),$($Service.Startname)"

Open in new window

I have found a few times that this works better than concatenation (which is what Dan's example uses).
In a case where your objective is to output a .CSV file however, in most cases I would use the Select-Object command to choose what properties I want and pipe that to Export-CSV.
Footech - That is excellent. Thank you. If I could give you some points now I would :)
I'm not versed enough on PS, so I find the $($.) construct harder to read. That's why I prefer concatenation. Easier on my brain :)