How to get Paths to all executables from Get-ChildItem - windows

Question

I am currently trying to get a list of all installed applications and would like to build a feature that can launch those.
I'm using these PowerShell commands:
gci HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | % { Get-ItemProperty $_.PsPath } | Select DisplayName,InstallLocation
gci HKLM:\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Uninstall\\* | % { Get-ItemProperty $_.PsPath } | Select DisplayName,InstallLocation
in conjunction with ConvertTo-Json in order to get a good stdout I can work with.
Now, this only gives me the InstallPath without any executables.
Is there any easy way to get the main executable of the applications i nthe list?
Expected Result (Name of the key does not matter):
// ...
{
"DisplayName": "Microsoft Edge",
"InstallLocation": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\Edge\\Application",
"LaunchApplication": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\Edge\\Application\msedge.exe",
},
{
"DisplayName": "Audacity 2.4.2",
"InstallLocation": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Audacity\\",
"LaunchApplication": "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Audacity\\audacity.exe"
},
// ...

Answer 1

Like others have pointed out in the comments, there isn't a conventional way of getting the executable paths of certain programs.
To answer your indirect question of building an app launch method, we can make use of a few things. Fortunately for us, PowerShell has a Get-StartApps cmdlet that produces an output of the current users installed apps:
Name AppID
---- -----
3D Viewer Microsoft.Microsoft3DViewer_8wekyb3d8bbwe!Microsoft.Microsoft3DViewer
AdGuard AdGuard
Adobe Acrobat DC {6D809377-6AF0-444B-8957-A3773F02200E}\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe
Battle.net {7C5A40EF-A0FB-4BFC-874A-C0F2E0B9FA8E}\Battle.net\Battle.net Launcher.exe
Blend for Visual Studio 2022 Blend.d58ce8bb
Calculator Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App
Calendar microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps_8wekyb3d8bbwe!microsoft.windowslive.calendar
There are 2 properties that are displayed:
Name
AppID.
This becomes important due to the AppID being the value needed for shell: to execute/launch the program. Given the above output of Get-StartApps, you can launch "Adobe Acrobat DC" by passing the AppID to shell:\AppsFolder\"AppID".
Start-Process shell:AppsFolder\"{6D809377-6AF0-444B-8957-A3773F02200E}\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe"
Using #zett42's approach, we can query your start menu, along with the system start menu folder paths for .lnk's retrieving its target path using the WScript COM object:
$paths = "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs","$env:APPDATA\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu"
Get-ChildItem -Path $paths -Filter "*.lnk" -File -Recurse |
ForEach-Object -Begin {
$WScriptShell = New-Object -ComObject "WScript.Shell"
} -Process {
[PSCustomObject]#{
Name = $_.BaseName
Path = $WScriptShell.CreateShortcut($_.FullName).TargetPath
}
} -End {
[void][System.Runtime.Interopservices.Marshal]::ReleaseComObject($WScriptShell) #release COM object
}
which will output:
Name Path
---- ----
Adobe Acrobat DC C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe
Blend for Visual Studio 2022 C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\Common7\IDE\Blend.exe
Firefox C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe
Google Chrome C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
Microsoft Edge C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe
TechPowerUp GPU-Z C:\Program Files (x86)\GPU-Z\GPU-Z.exe
Not entirely sure this is what you're after, but it may be of help to others.