Query value in HKCU

Hi

I’m a new PowerShell user, I’ve spent alot of time searching but not been able to find the answer [that I understand] to my questions below.

We have an application that defines a user home folder in this path HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Objective\Client\ObjectiveHome\Preferences

I can use this command to find this value

PS HKCU:> Get-Item ‘HKCU:\Software\Objective\Client\Preferences’ | Get-ItemProperty

which returns

DefaultHome : C:\Users\username\OBJECTIVE%OBJSERVER%-%OBJPORT%%OBJUSER%
ShowRowGuides : Y
EvenRowColor : 255,255,255
PSPath : Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\Registry::HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Objective\Client\Pref
erences
PSParentPath : Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\Registry::HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Objective\Client
PSChildName : Preferences
PSProvider : Microsoft.PowerShell.Core\Registry

My Questions are

  1. Can I adjust my Powershell string to just return the value of the DefaultHome key only? I’ve tried a variety of options but got nothing to work
  2. Can I then use this to query this value on remote machines?
  3. If the answer to 2 is Yes what would be the best way to achieve this?

Thanks, Craig

You can use Select-Object, or use property expansion if you just need a single value.
example:

Get-ItemProperty -Path 'HKCU:\Software\Objective\Client\Preferences' | Select-Object -Property DefaultHome
OR
$(Get-ItemProperty -Path 'HKCU:\Software\Objective\Client\Preferences').DefaultHome

You can use Invoke-Command to query these properties on remote machines, as long as they have PSRemoting enabled and you have administrative access to the machines.

Invoke-Command -ComputerName Computer01 -ScriptBlock {Get-ItemProperty -Path 'HKCU:\Software\Objective\Client\Preferences'} | Select-Object PSComputerName,DefaultHome

The above command will list the results of the registry query along with the name of the computer that value was retrieved from.

HOWEVER: You are trying to access the HKCU registry hive for information. Unfortunately (for this specific case, I presume), PSRemoting connects with the credentials of the current user, therefore value retrieved will be the value as is set in your own user profile on the remote machine.

To get the value from other users on the remote machine, you’d have to first connect to the HKU registry hive, then search it and identify which root belongs to whom, etc.

Thanks for your response Peter, I’ve gone with the first suggestion you made. You are correct in your assumption that I would like to run this against remote machines.

I’m currently trying to understand the process I need to follow further, but I think I need to first identify the SID of the users profile that I want to check, and then run the query against this value

Can anyone point me in the right direction of a good resource that explains the process I should be following?