Software's List Installed on Windows Machine

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Introduction

Many of us don't know what softwares are installed and strive to check them programatically. Here's a simple way to get that list. This is very useful when you want to create an installer for your projects, which helps you in checking the right version of minimal software requirements for your projects on clients' machine. 

Background

There's no complicated code in this. If you have basic knowledge of Windows Registry, that's enough. But be sure you make a backup of your registry before doing anything with it as that is a good and safe way of programming. 

Using the Code

I have taken a simple Console Application in C#, created an object for registry accessing the right path, i.e. SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall.

This registry path has all the list of softwares installed on your machine. Following is the code to achieve it in C#.

In C#

class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
          // Do back up of ur registry before running it.
          //Registry path which has information of all the softwares installed on machine
            string uninstallKey = @"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall";
            using (RegistryKey rk = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(uninstallKey))
            {
                foreach (string skName in rk.GetSubKeyNames())
                {
                    using (RegistryKey sk = rk.OpenSubKey(skName))
                    {
                        // we have many attributes other than these which are useful.
                        Console.WriteLine(sk.GetValue("DisplayName") + 
				"  " + sk.GetValue("DisplayVersion"));
                    }
                    
                }
            }
            Console.ReadLine(); // To make the o/p readable.
        }        
    }	

In VB.NET

Imports System 
Imports System.Collections.Generic 
Imports System.Text 
Imports Microsoft.Win32 

Namespace SEList 
    Class Program 
        Private Shared Sub Main(args As String()) 
           ' Do back up of ur registry before running it. 
           'Registry path which has information of all the softwares installed on machine 
       Dim uninstallKey As String = "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall" 
            Using rk As RegistryKey = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(uninstallKey) 
                For Each skName As String In rk.GetSubKeyNames() 
                    Using sk As RegistryKey = rk.OpenSubKey(skName) 
                        ' we have many attributes other than these which are useful. 
     Console.WriteLine(sk.GetValue("DisplayName") + " " + sk.GetValue("DisplayVersion")) 
                   
        End Using 
         Next 
        End Using 
        Console.ReadLine() ' To make the o/p readable. 
        End Sub 
    End Class 
End Namespace	 

Points of Interest

This code snippet is handy for developers working on creating installers for projects, which gives them flexibility to check the correct version of software installed on client machine to avoid confusion later. It's a good way of creating the installers. This is useful for all kinds of applications developed in Microsoft .NET environment.

History

• 30^th September 2008: Initial post

This is my first article on CodeProject. Hope to post more useful code snippets in future. Leave me your suggestions and comments as these are the things which boost us and help us in giving more relevant and error free code snippets.