Can I list apps that don't have registry entries? - windows

Question

I've been working on a way to quickly and easily list all of the software installed on my machine. Once complete, I'd like to send it out to my group so that I can have everyone run it. Since the purpose of this exercise is generate a list of all of the applications that we absolutely require access to to our IT administrators, I don't want to miss anything important.
Up to this point, I've used code very similar to this - it looks in the registry at SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\ and Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\ and gives me all of the software that has been installed. However, a bunch of important programs are conspicuously absent (e.g. R, RStudio, SQL Developer), and I assume it's because they do not use Windows Installers.
This brings me to my question - is there a way I can list all of the programs that can be run on my machine (that have not impacted the registry)? Essentially, I think I want all of the non-system *.exe files, but that is probably oversimplifying things.
Anyone have any ideas? My code is VBS now, but I can muddle my way through most things.

Answer 1

If you want to find them all then you need to search every single file on your machine and check whether or not it has an executable extension. I'm reasonably confident that you are not going to want to do this.

Answer 2

I read your answer and laughed, since I was also "reasonably confident" that I did not want to go through all of the files on my (or anyone else's) machine. Once the laughing stopped, I realized that that's essentially what I had to do...
I've come up with something that works, and it now takes minutes to run (it took seconds to only check the registry), but it does work. I'm putting it here in case it can assist someone else, or maybe someone can find a way to make it more efficient. You need to supply some paths to folders where you want to look for exe files, and a file that you want to output to.
Thanks for reading.
On Error Resume Next
Folders = Array("C:\users\me","C:\SoftwareFolder1","C:\SoftwareFolder2","C:\SoftwareFolder3")
sFile="C:\myExeFiles.txt"
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Const ForReading = 1
Const ForWriting = 2
Const OverwriteIfExist = -1
Set fFile = objFSO.CreateTextFile(sFile, OverwriteIfExist, OpenAsASCII)
For Each x In Folders
Set objFolder = objFSO.GetFolder(x)
suckTheData objFSO, fFile, objFolder
Set objFolder = Nothing
Next
MsgBox("Done")
Set objFSO = Nothing
Sub suckTheData(objFSO, fFile, objFolder)
' *** STEP 1 *** 'Find files with a partiular extension in this folder
For Each objFile In objFolder.Files
If UCase(objFSO.GetExtensionName(objFile.Name))="EXE" Then
fFile.Write objFile & vbCrLf
If Err.Number <> 0 Then
fFile.Write "Error: " & objFile & " " & Err.Number & Err.Source & " " & Err.Description & vbCrLf
End If
End If
Next
Set objFile = Nothing
' *** STEP 2 *** 'Now that we've processed files, repeat for subdirectories
For Each subf In objFolder.SubFolders
'some folders can't/shouldn't be checked -
'16 is a normal folder, 32 is an archive, 1046 is symbolic, etc
If subf.Attributes ="16" Then
suckTheData objFSO, fFile, subf
End If
Next
Set subf = Nothing
End Sub