The other day, I needed a list of all the software I’ve installed on my Windows laptop. There are several ways to do this in Windows, each of which will give slightly different, incomplete results (thanks, Microsoft!)
I use a combination of these two methods:
- Launch Powershell
- At the prompt, type wmic to open the Windows Management Instrumentation command line.
- From the command line, use the following command:
/output:C:\programs-list.txt product get name, version
This will create a file in the root of the C drive with a text file containing a list of programs installed on the system, along with the software’s self-reported version number.
The other method also uses PowerShell, but this time exports a list of programs that are listed as available for uninstall in the Windows registry.
From a PowerShell window, run the following command:
Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, InstallDate | Format-Table -AutoSize > C:\InstalledApps.txt