Find the registry key that has a value of a certain name in PowerShell

Question

I know I have a registry entry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/CLASSES that has a certain value. However, I don't know the Key. (This is a GUID that I am trying to look up.) The following code works to get to this value, but it's slow and seems inelegant. Is there a better way of doing it?

$key = Get-ChildItem -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Classes" -Recurse | Get-ItemProperty -Name "FooBar" -ErrorAction @{}
$codeGuid = $key.PsChildName

Zach Alexander · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-07 10:07:36Z

3

The recurse is what kills you. To lighten the burden of recursively searching Classes, you can manually specify a Depth. If you KNOW how many steps your key is into the Registry Hierarchy, you can cut the speed significantly. For example:

$Timer = New-Object System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch

######NORMAL#######
#Completes in 70.2157527 Seconds on my system
$Timer.Start()
    Get-ChildItem -Path "HKLM:\Software\Classes" -Recurse | Get-ItemProperty -Name "AlwaysShowExt" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Out-Null
$Timer.Stop()
$Timer.Elapsed
$Timer.Reset()

######DEPTH 1######
#Completes in 12.7461096 Seconds on my system
$Timer.Start()
    Get-ChildItem -Path "HKLM:\Software\Classes" -Recurse -Depth 1 | Get-ItemProperty -Name "AlwaysShowExt" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Out-Null
$Timer.Stop()
$Timer.Elapsed
$Timer.Reset()

######DEPTH 2######
#Completes in 33.9162044 Seconds on my system
$Timer.Start()
    Get-ChildItem -Path "HKLM:\Software\Classes" -Recurse -Depth 2 | Get-ItemProperty -Name "AlwaysShowExt" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Out-Null
$Timer.Stop()
$Timer.Elapsed
$Timer.Reset()

Your best results are going to be with a Depth of 1, but Depths of 2 or 3 will still be faster than not specifying.

edited Jul 7, 2017 at 10:07

user6811411

answered Jul 6, 2017 at 21:56

Zach Alexander

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3 Comments

afeygin Over a year ago

I am at a depth of 2; so this is better than before. But is there a way to stop the search once the first is found? That may improve things even better.

Zach Alexander Over a year ago

@afeygin There's probably a way to do it but I'm not aware of it. I'll let you if I find a way. Also, the Depth param only works after Powershell v5. If you need an alternative you can do something like: Get-ChildItem HKLM:\Software\Classes\*\*\*

afeygin Over a year ago

I found that I could locate the key a lot faster by looking in "HKLM:\Software\Classes\Installer\Features" instead of just "HKLM:\Software\Classes".

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