CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershellregistry
Ju Tutt
Ju Tutt

Reputation: 221

Find and display registry empty keys with Powershell

How to find and display Windows registry empty keys using Powershell?

Know that GetChild-Item can search Registry using HKLM:\ or HKCU:\.

I tried

Get-ChildItem "HKLM:\" -Recurse | 
    Where Property -like '' | foreach {
    $_.GetValue("DisplayName")
}

but doesn't work.

For empty keys I mean keys that have only the Default value and do not have sub-keys.

Then export to a text file using >, analyze the result and delete what is not needed.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 750

Answers (2)

Ju Tutt
Ju Tutt

Reputation: 221

Modified @Olaf solution with -ExpandProperty to handle long registry paths and Name not to have prefix before registry path

Get-ChildItem -Path 'HKCU:', 'HKLM:' -r -ea si |
    Where-Object {
        -not $_.SubKeyCount -and
        -not $_.Property
    } | 
        Select-object -ExpandProperty Name > list_empty.txt

Upvotes: 0

Olaf
Olaf

Reputation: 5232

So you're looking for registry keys with no subkey and no property - except for the default value. Because both properties are provided when you use Get-ChildItem you just have to filter for them:

Get-ChildItem -Path 'REGISTRY::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE', 'REGISTRY::HKEY_CURRENT_USER' -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
    Where-Object {
        -not $_.SubKeyCount -and
        -not $_.Property
    } | 
        Select-object -Property PSPath

It is still a bad idea to remove keys from the registry without the need.

Upvotes: 4

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