I cannot recall if I read it, or I heard it, but either way a while back I either read, or heard that using the Get-HotFix cmdlet is not the best way to retrieve a list of all installed updates on a system. If it is not the best way, then what is? Should I query the Registry?
Any help would be, of course, greatly appreciated.
You can query the registry for this information, specifically the ‘HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Component Based Servicing\Packages’ is what you would like to query.
Alternatively you can use the Microsoft.Update.Session Com Object to retrieve the information or WMI to query for this. I know the scripting guy did a informative blog post on the WMI approach: Use PowerShell to Easily Find Information About Hotfixes