Local registry values returned by Get-Childitem when invoked on remote computer

Question

Hi

Probably a silly question and a straightforward answer, but it confuses me a bit.
It seems to me the command below retrieves the remote keys and items, but the values of these are from the local machine. Why is that?

• Invoke-Command -ComputerName Computer01 -ScriptBlock {Get-ChildItem -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4'}
• Invoke-Command -ComputerName Computer01 -ScriptBlock {Get-ChildItem -Path 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4'}

Regards
Frederick

Answer 1

Probably because the properties are not evaluated until after the invoke-command has completed and the PSPath of the object points to a "local" name.

cls  
"This demonstrates the 'Problem'"  
Invoke-Command -ComputerName test10b -ScriptBlock {  
    "This portion of the script is running on {0}" -f $env:COMPUTERNAME  
    "Here is reg.exe"  
    reg.exe query HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName /s  
      
    "Here is the computername from the registry"  
    Get-ChildItem 'HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName'   
}  

cls  
"This shows one way to enumerate the properties and values."  
Invoke-Command -ComputerName test10b -ScriptBlock {  
    "This portion of the script is running on {0}" -f $env:COMPUTERNAME  
    "Here is reg.exe"  
    reg.exe query HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName /s  
    "Here is Get-Childitem"  
    $Keys = Get-ChildItem HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName  
    foreach ($k in $keys){  
          $k.Name  
          $props = (Get-Item -Path $k.pspath).property  
          foreach ($p in $props) {  
             $v = Get-ItemPropertyvalue -Path $k.pspath -name  $p          
             "   {0} - {1}" -f $p , $v  
          }  
      }    
}  
  

To read the DotNet values I had to add -recurse.

cls  
"DotNet reg key with multiple subkeys"   
Invoke-Command -ComputerName test10b -ScriptBlock {  
    "This portion of the script is running on {0}" -f $env:COMPUTERNAME  
    "Here is reg.exe"  
    reg.exe query "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4" /s  
    "Here is Get-Childitem"  
    $Keys = Get-ChildItem -recurse "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v4"  
    foreach ($k in $keys){  
          $k.Name  
          $props = (Get-Item -Path $k.pspath).property  
          foreach ($p in $props) {  
             $v = Get-ItemPropertyvalue -Path $k.pspath -name  $p          
             "   {0} - {1}" -f $p , $v  
          }  
      }    
}