powershell wait for command to finish before proceeding

Question

In powershell I am trying to do the following:

$name = "computername"
#get installed programs
Write-Host "****APPLICATIONS"
gwmi win32_Product -ComputerName $name | select name

#gets services
write-host "****SERVICES"
Get-Service -ComputerName $name | ft

the expected output would be

****APPLICATIONS
name
of
app

****SERVICES
running services here
more services here

the actual result is

****APPLICATIONS
****SERVICES
name
of
app
running services here
more services here

I have attempted to do start-job then wait-job , but running gwmi as a job seems to output nothing to the console and sending the output to a separate file defeats the purpose of other parts of the script

I also attempted to use start-sleep and it still finishes both write-host commands before proceeding

While Win32_Product may work it is a generally regarded as a bad way to retrieve information about installed software. Even Microsoft's Hey Scripting Guys have written articles about how bad it is. I would suggest looking at [this answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/25268564) for a faster alternative. — StephenP, Jan 13 '17 at 00:13

Ash Housewares · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-12T22:12:08.453

1

Try this:

$name = "computername"
Write-Host "`n****APPLICATIONS`n"
gwmi win32_Product -ComputerName $name | % {$_.name}
write-host "`n****SERVICES"
Get-Service -ComputerName $name | ft

If you want the results alphabetical:

$name = "computername"
Write-Host "`n****APPLICATIONS`n"
$apps = gwmi win32_Product -ComputerName $name | % {$_.name}
$apps | sort
write-host "`n****SERVICES"
Get-Service -ComputerName $name | ft

edited Jan 12 '17 at 22:12

answered Jan 12 '17 at 22:04

Ash Housewares

155
1
8

this works perfectly, could you explain a bit what the `n does here? I've never seen this notation in powershell – Cpt.Whale Jan 13 '17 at 13:19
1

@user19702 - That is for newline. It just makes the output easier to read by putting a blank line between the data sets. Without those characters, there would be no space between the `Write-Host` lines and the applications and services lists. If you want to see the difference, you can remove them and run it. – Ash Housewares Jan 13 '17 at 17:53

Shawn Esterman · Answer 2 · 2017-01-12T21:39:27.300

0

Param(
    $ComputerName = 'AT805061'
)

# Get installed programs
Write-Host "`n****APPLICATIONS`n"
Get-WmiObject win32_Product -ComputerName $ComputerName | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name | Sort-Object

# Get services
Write-Host "`n****SERVICES`n"
Get-Service -ComputerName $ComputerName | Where-Object -Property Status -eq -Value Running | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name | Sort-Object

edited Jan 12 '17 at 21:39

answered Jan 12 '17 at 21:26

Shawn Esterman

2,292
1
10
15

You should try a parameter block instead of a variable. That way you could be like "C:\Scripts\ComputerInfo.ps1 -ComputerName MyComputer1" and it would run the script with that parameter. – Shawn Esterman Jan 12 '17 at 21:27
Also I believe you just need to modify your script to expand the Name property to strings. They would currently be the type: Selected.System.Management.ManagementObject – Shawn Esterman Jan 12 '17 at 21:29
Also added sorting and only selecting services that were running. – Shawn Esterman Jan 12 '17 at 21:39

powershell wait for command to finish before proceeding

2 Answers2